Monday night was truly a marathon for CNN as they aired five back-to-back town halls with 2020 Democratic candidates. Yet, despite it being only one day after the massive coordinated terrorist attack in Sri Lanka by Islamic extremists that mainly targeted Christians with almost 300 dead and 500 injured, CNN offered zero questions about anti-Christian bigotry. Instead, CNN asked those candidates nine combined questions on impeaching President Trump.
For the town halls for Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN) and Senator Kamala Harris (CA), Trump’s impeachment was at the top of the docket. “You serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Should the House — should the House Judiciary Committee move forward with impeachment proceedings against President Trump,” one student asked Klobuchar. The second question she received on the topic came in the form of a follow up from moderator Chris Cuomo.
“In light of Mueller’s report do you believe the Democrats in Congress should reconsider their position on impeachment,” was the question that kicked off Harris’s town hall.
Since Senator Elizabeth Warren (MA) was the first Democratic candidate to openly call for Trump’s impeachment, moderator Anderson Cooper pressed her on how that battle could hurt Democratic chances to beat him (click “expand”):
I do just want to ask you, you have called for impeachment proceedings to be initiated against President Trump. What do you say to those Democrats that say, look, this is not the time. It’s going to take away the focus from the election in 2020. Speaker Pelosi told her caucus again today she has no plans to immediately initiate impeachment proceedings.
(…)
Doesn’t putting a lot of people’s focus on impeaching the President, which is not going to pass in the Senate, it’s not really going to go anywhere in that sense, doesn’t that take away focus from the tabletop issues that you and other Democrats say they want to run on?
Using Warren’s answer as the preface, Cuomo wanted to know if Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) wanted to go as far as she did: putting Trump in prison.
“Doesn’t putting a lot of people’s focus on impeaching the President, which is not going to pass in the Senate, it’s not really going to go anywhere in that sense, doesn’t that take away focus from the tabletop issues that you and other Democrats say they want to run on,” Cuomo wondered.
Cuomo followed up by pressing Sanders on “why look again” when both the Special Counsel and the heads of the Justice Department found nothing prosecutable regarding Trump:
Aside from their own personal biases being on display, you can’t draw any conclusions from CNN’s presentation. There can be no doubt that the applications for those wishing to appear on their little party rally included questions such as “On a scale of one to 10, how viscerally do you hate Trump, with 10 being sky-screaming hate?”