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CNN host Dana Bash put her pettiness on full display during Tuesday’s Inside Politics as she took issue with President-elect Trump quipping about how “In the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.” While the rest of her panel of liberal journalists were able to admit things were “going his way,” Bash felt the need to fact-check what she admitted was “rhetorical;” to point out how journalists and an anti-Trump judge don’t want to be his friends.

After teeing up the soundbite of Trump’s comments by noting that she and CNN political director David Chalian had huffed about it in his office the day prior, Bash thought a fact-check of Trump’s personality was needed:

TRUMP: One of the big differences between the first term – In the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend. I don’t know. My personality changed or something.

[Cuts back to live]

BASH: That was rhetorical. His personality has not changed.

She marveled at how Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos had recently gone down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. “We’ve seen so many other examples of all of these big, big, big time CEOs, many of whom I would even say, most of whom have given to Democrats historically and are now many of them giving to Donald Trump’s inauguration and making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago,” she added.

“So, as we know, Donald Trump is happy to take their money and help pay for his inauguration. There’s no doubt that is part of this,” Chalian responded.

Further in the segment, Bash’s fact-checking pivoted to the “everybody wants to be my friend” line from Trump. “And yet not everybody is bending the knee,” she said as she proceeded to tout the judge overseeing the hush money case against Trump:

Like Judge Juan Merchan in New York, who said that he is not immune from sentencing in the case that he’s in charge of up there. And Donald Trump took notice of that. He attacked the judge today in the last hour, as “deeply conflicted, corrupt, biased, incompetent,” called him “a radical partisan” “keeping in place an illegal gag order so I cannot expose his and his family’s disqualifying and illegal conflicts,’” so on and so forth.

Her other example of people who didn’t want to be Trump’s friends were her fellow left-wing journalists. She parroted the latest talking point fear that Trump’s lawsuit against the Des Moines Register was going to have a “chilling effect”:

Maybe a more severe example of the way that he is trying to set the table and set the stakes for those who are not going down [to Mar-a-Lago] or for those he wants to, as I said yesterday, you know, throw a shot across the bow, perhaps make a chilling effect for those of us who are reporters. He officially launched a lawsuit, filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and its pollster, Ann Selzer, last night because of its poll in October, which showed Harris winning the state of Iowa, which of course didn’t happen.

It’s kind of difficult for it to have a chilling effect when the liberal media’s hatred for Trump burns with the fire of a thousand suns.

The CNN journalists on the panel did disagree with the critique Bash was forwarding. National correspondent Kristen Holmes described what Trump was experiencing as him “living his best life right now.”

Holmes also noted the tonal change to Trump’s transition in contrast to 2016:

This is the life that Donald Trump thought he was going to have in 2016 after he was elected president, and then realized that the platform that he had run on was not popular with any of these people, and he was quickly shunned by the tech industry, by a lot of media. He did not have the same welcoming that he had this time around. I mean, when I talked to some of his advisers and we talk about the fact that he won TIME person of the year, he even feels like this time around was different, like he actually won it.

“The same way that he feels about the election, which is that he won the popular vote, as well as the electoral college, and he feels like he actually won this time. And that’s why people are coming to him,” she added.

Senior political analyst Nia-Malika Henderson did admit that Trump was experiencing a pretty good honeymoon period with the American people and that “lots of things [were] going his way.”

“One of the things that will be interesting to see is sort of how long the honeymoon lasts,” she said. “It is certainly a honeymoon. The second time is sweeter for Donald Trump. And you see lots of things going his way. His approval rating is high. The transition ratings – which you talked about last week – are higher than they were last week.”

The transcript is below. Click “expand” to read:

CNN’s Inside Politics
December 17, 2024
12:09:19 p.m. Eastern

(…)

DANA BASH: You and I were talking. I’ll give people a behind the scenes look – color of you and I were talking in your office yesterday after Donald Trump’s press conference about a moment that we played afterwards, which kind of sums up the moment that he is in right now. And I want to play a little bit more of that and talk to you on the other side.

[Cuts to video]

PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: One of the big differences between the first term – In the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend. I don’t know. My personality changed or something.

[Cuts back to live]

BASH: That was rhetorical. His personality has not changed.

And the reason I wanted to keep talking about it today is because we’re seeing another example of that today with Ted Sarandos of the – of Netflix going down to see him. And then just kind of look at the big picture of it all, tech titans. This is just in the tech world. We’ve seen so many other examples of all of these big, big, big time CEOs, many of whom I would even say, most of whom have given to Democrats historically and are now many of them giving to Donald Trump’s inauguration and making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago.

DAVID CHALIAN: So, as we know, Donald Trump is happy to take their money and help pay for his inauguration. There’s no doubt that is part of this. But you say, look at the tech titans, and I look at that list and I see the leaders of modern-day media just broadly. And Donald Trump’s fascination with his ability to be dominant in media space and communicating a message and garnering a ton of attention. Those are the executives of the companies that have the largest spotlights to shine places these days. And I don’t think that’s lost on Donald Trump in seeking [inaudible].

BASH: That’s such a good point. Media, which is different, I think, from journalism, which we’re going to talk about in a second. But you’re right, that is modern media.

And then just going to another list, Kristen, because you spent a lot of time down in and around Mar-a-Lago about everybody who wants to be his friend. World leaders in in addition to the tech people we were talking about, of course, he was just named TIME magazine’s person of the year. He rang the opening bell at the New York stock exchange. He had a front row seat at the reopening of Notre Dame.

KRISTEN HOLMES: He’s living his best life right now.

BASH: Yeah.

HOLMES: This is the life that Donald Trump thought he was going to have in 2016 after he was elected president, and then realized that the platform that he had run on was not popular with any of these people, and he was quickly shunned by the tech industry, by a lot of media. He did not have the same welcoming that he had this time around. I mean, when I talked to some of his advisers and we talk about the fact that he won TIME person of the year, he even feels like this time around was different, like he actually won it. The same way that he feels about the election, which is that he won the popular vote, as well as the electoral college, and he feels like he actually won this time. And that’s why people are coming to him.

But what’s been so interesting, talking to the people around him in this moment, is just what it is that he’s saying behind the scenes, because that you just saw in that press conference is a lot of what he says to people around him, this kind of marvel and awe that all of these people want to meet with him and talk to him, and he’s taking it in and he’s taking advantage of it.

BASH: And yet not everybody is bending the knee.

HOLMES: Not everybody, no.

BASH: Like Judge Juan Merchan in New York, who said that he is not immune from sentencing in the case that he’s in charge of up there. And Donald Trump took notice of that. He attacked the judge today in the last hour, as “deeply conflicted, corrupt, biased, incompetent,” called him “a radical partisan” “keeping in place an illegal gag order so I cannot expose his and his family’s disqualifying and illegal conflicts,’” so on and so forth.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON: Yeah. I mean, and this is what he’s been saying for many months, saying that he is compromised, that he has a conflict of interest because of one of his family members. So, not everything is going his way.

One of the things that will be interesting to see is sort of how long the honeymoon lasts. It is certainly a honeymoon. The second time is sweeter for Donald Trump. And you see lots of things going his way. His approval rating is high. The transition ratings – which you talked about last week – are higher than they were last week. So, we’ll see what happens when he gets to Congress when he goes through these confirmation hearings that I think are going to be fairly bruising for some of some of these picks and tries to muscle his agenda through a very narrow House, and then a senate that he has much wider, wider margins on. So, you know, stay tuned for the next month.

BASH: But he is all in. I mean, that’s one example. Maybe a more severe example of the way that he is trying to set the table and set the stakes for those who are not going down or for those he wants to, as I said yesterday, you know, throw a shot across the bow, perhaps make a chilling effect for those of us who are reporters. He officially launched a lawsuit, filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and its pollster, Ann Selzer, last night because of its poll in October, which showed Harris winning the state of Iowa, which of course didn’t happen.

And I’m just wondering what you make of that given the obvious attempt at what he’s trying to do and whether or not – I mean, whether or not he’s going to have success because people like us are, you know, we understand what it is that he’s trying to do. But just even the notion that he’s trying this hard with the litigious way that he is.

CHALIAN: Well, first of all, being litigious is not new to Donald Trump.

BASH: No, that’s always the way he is.

CHALIAN: So, this is the story of his life long before he got into politics. So, this is a continuation of that personality trait. The chilling effect is no doubt the goal here that – I don’t think he’s actually trying to win this lawsuit. Also. I mean, I find me a pollster in America, including Donald Trump’s pollsters, who don’t come back with a bad poll once in a while. It’s like, what makes all the good polls valid is that you sometimes come out of the field with a bad poll. So, this is particularly an egregious example, but this is also classic Donald Trump.

BASH: Yeah. Okay.