AMAC Exclusive – By Seamus Brennan
According to a recent New York Times report, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is actively in talks with left-leaning networks like CNN, CBS, and NBC as prospective sponsors for its 2024 presidential primary debates.
Could the RNC possibly be more out of touch with its voters?
“In an intriguing show of détente, the Republican National Committee has asked several major TV networks—including CNN, a regular Republican boogeyman—to consider sponsoring debates,” the report states. “Party officials are also in talks with executives from ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News.”
Those same networks’ handling of the Republican primary debates for the 2016 cycle should disqualify them from consideration this time around. During the October 2015 debate, then-presidential candidate Ted Cruz famously channeled Americans’ frustration with the glaring biases of the mainstream media. “You know, let me say something at the outset. The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media,” Cruz said in a perfect distillation of conservatives’ exasperation toward the increasingly activist media complex.
“You look at the questions: ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’” Cruz continued. “How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?”
Of course, since the 2016 presidential primaries, the media’s credibility has only sunken further.
Throughout Trump’s presidency, Americans witnessed the propagation of an endless series of lies, hoaxes, and contrivances manufactured by the media for the sole purpose of smearing Republican officeholders and sullying Republican voters. The entirely discredited Russiagate narrative, the outrageous smearing of Brett Kavanaugh as a serial rapist, the dismissing of the COVID-19 lab theory as a “racist conspiracy theory,” and the thoroughly debunked narratives surrounding the events of January 6 constitute just a few notable examples.
The media then doubled down on their forfeiture of credibility during the 2020 presidential cycle. The general election debates between Trump and Biden were a comedy of “gotcha” questions aimed at Trump while the moderators lobbed softballs for a clearly struggling Joe Biden.
Then, with weeks to go until the election, the same media engaged in the blatant spreading of disinformation and open censorship by suppressing and discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop scandal—which many conservatives rightly consider to be an instance of brazen election interference.
But the media’s propensity to fake narrative-building and hoax instigation is not limited to attacks on Republicans. For years, media forces have propped up lies about the COVID pandemic, slandered innocent high school students as raging white supremacists, and aided in the schemes of left-wing figures to propagate false accounts of systemic racism.
Given all of this—and everything that voters have witnessed in recent years—why would the RNC delegate a major part of the presidential selection process to networks actively committed to destroying Republicans?
Prior to the January New York Times report, the Republican establishment had shown promising signs of avoiding a debate process controlled by left-wing forces. Last year, the RNC voted unanimously to exit the Commission on Presidential Debates.
“The Commission on Presidential Debates is biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms to help ensure fair debates, including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who have never worked for candidates on the debate stage,” Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel declared in a statement, referring to the fact that the moderator of the first presidential debate in 2020 previously worked in Joe Biden’s Senate office.
But given the news that the RNC is now likely to enlist precisely the same “biased” entities to orchestrate the Republican nomination process once again, it appears McDaniel’s words were nothing more than empty rhetoric. Given the open hostility—even hatred—CNN has for Trump and other leading Republicans; one has to wonder whether elements of the RNC are intentionally setting up one or more Republican primary candidates to be targeted by the network’s moderators.
If GOP leadership wants to retain the trust of its voter base, conduct a fair debate process that reflects the voices of conservatives, and, most importantly, defeat the Democrat nominee in 2024, it must reject the hopelessly biased and corrupt mainstream media establishment.
Republican voters will not—and should not—tolerate anything less.
