Carville 'highly critical' of most media coverage of Trump
Democratic strategist James Carville on Saturday sharply criticized the news media for the way it covers former President Trump in the lead up to the election next week.
“We got nine days to go, and the existence of the Constitution and the system of government that we have had and treasured for so long in this country, is at risk. Plain and simple. And it needs to be covered that way,” Carville told CNN’s Jessica Dean.
Carville implicitly pushed back on the argument that media ought to cover Trump and his political opponent, Vice President Harris, in the same way.
Carville, instead, compared the GOP nominee to figures that the public has largely come to view as threats to America or its values.
“I am highly critical of 80 percent of the media coverage that tells me that I do not understand their jobs. I understand it clearly. Your job in Birmingham was not to cover Bull Connor and Martin Luther King equally,” he said, referring to the Alabama city’s commissioner of public safety who strongly opposed the civil rights movement and to one of the leaders of the movement, respectively.
“Your job after Pearl Harbor was not to cover Tojo and Franklin Roosevelt equally,” he continued, referring to Hideki Tojo, who led Japan through much of World War II.
Carville made the case that the republic’s existence “is at severe risk” and urged the media to cover it accordingly.
“We have to explain it to people in plain, unambiguous everyday language that our children are going to accept the consequences of our negligence and our fake fair coverage that people come out with. So that’s what I think we should do between now and Election Day,” he said.
With just over a week to go before Election Day, Democrats and Republicans have blanketed key battleground states, trying to make their cases with voters who could be decisive in electing the next president.
Democrats have in recent days emphasized comments from former Trump administration officials who have described Trump as a fascist. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, said recently that Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist.” Former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Gen. Mark Milley, also called Trump “a total fascist” in a recent report.
Asked Wednesday during a CNN town hall whether she agrees and thinks Trump is a fascist, Harris said, “Yes, I do. Yes, I do.”
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for a response.