Thursday on MSNBC, host Stephanie Ruhle said Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton “faces a double standard every day” from the media on the “right, left and center.”
Partial transcript as follows:
KRISTOL: Johnson and Stein are getting over a third of the vote of people under 30. Think about that. Obama carried that vote by 2 to 1. Hillary Clinton is not getting enough support, and they don’t like Trump, the young voters. I think Hillary Clinton hasn’t made the case to them. That’s the broader problem here. The whole Clinton campaign and the liberal media and everyone else has been totally obsessed with disqualifying Donald Trump. I dislike Donald Trump. I think he shouldn’t be president of the United States, but I think most of that information is out there. The fact he’s 15 pounds overweight is not going to cause people to vote against him. What is the case for Clinton? Think about this. This is an honest question.
RUHLE: Hold on. Is it fair to just say and dismiss, ‘the liberal media is out there trying to make a case against Donald Trump’? The media was front and center Sunday morning playing it over and over and over when Hillary Clinton tripped. Hillary Clinton faces a double standard every day, right, left, and center. Is it fair to continue the narrative it’s the liberal media just going after Donald.
KRISTOL: She did trip or faint or swoon or whatever happened. She has pneumonia.
RUHLE: He has done things that are reprehensible.
KRISTOL: I totally agree with that. I think most people know that. The Clinton campaign, the media is playing into Trump’s hands inadvertently. When you have a discussion about health, there’s not a single American out there who is going to vote against Trump because he’s 15 pounds overweight. He’s not the one who collapsed on 9/11. I don’t think you should vote against Hillary. It’s a phony issue. Both seem to be perfectly healthy and fine, healthy enough to be president of the United States. I don’t think that’s the big issue.
RUHLE: That’s only because we don’t know everything about his health.
KRISTOL: Right, that’s a very fair point to make, and we don’t know everything about his tax returns or everything about his foundation. But I kinda think that point has been made a lot. If I were the Clinton campaign, analytically, what’s happened here, they have hammered Trump. His numbers are bad. It’s not like people like Donald Trump. He’s got horrible favorable/unfavorable numbers, but Hillary Clinton hasn’t made the case for herself. Obviously, yesterday, she was home, she went on a tweet storm, you saw that, 20 tweets all about Donald Trump’s foundation and how horrible it is. She’s running for president of the United States. She needs to do more. I really say this, I don’t like her much either, but if I were part of her campaign, she has to make the case for herself. It’s a change election. Voters want change. I was in the first Bush White House in ’92. when people want change, they will excuse a lot. More than they should, about the challenger, about the person who says I’m going to bring change. Whatever you think about Trump, he’s got to get tough on immigration, get out of wars in the Middle East. Voters can say, yeah, things need to be shaken up. What is Hillary Clinton going to do to improve people’s lives? She needs to make that positive case for herself in my opinion.
RUHLE: Is she not doing that? This woman has devoted her career to the political arena. She’s got her policies out there. Just this week, Ivanka and Donald Trump said, well, her policies on health care, she doesn’t have any. In fact, she has made that case for herself. It’s been on her website for over a year.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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