Link: MSNBC: The Interview by Thomas Roberts with Susan McGrath and Nick DeCegile

The MSNBC Interview: Pinellas County D. E. C. Chairwoman Susan McGrath and Pinellas County R. E. C. Chairman Nick Decegile

Mark Skogman     Senior Reporter     Spectrum 360 Media

’16 Mar. 12 Sat. E. S. T. 04:14

At 2:39PM on Wednesday, 08 March, 2016, Susan McGrath appeared on the afternoon coverage of the 2016 Primary election on The Place For Politics on MSNBC. Susan McGrath is the Chair of the Pinellas County Democratic Executive Committee that operates the Democratic Party in Pinellas County in the state of Florida. Also appearing in the same interview was Nick DiCegile. Nick DeCegile is Chair of the Pinellas County Republican Executive Committee that operates the Republican Party in Pinellas County. The interview was conducted by MSNBC host Thomas Roberts. The Chairs represented their parties and discussed the election for the 4 minute, 17 second interview.

One poll that was discussed is the Florida Decides Statewide Poll that indicates Donald Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton by 1% in a general election match up with Trump getting 45% of the vote and Clinton getting 44% of the vote with 12% undecided conducted between March 04- 06, ’16. The polls discussed completely omitted any polling results indicating the status of Bernie Sanders in the primary election. This was odd considering that the polling results displayed in the interview graphics indicated results for all four of the remaining Republican presidential candidates.

This type of coverage by MSNBC just reinforces the perception by Sanders supporters of a bias in the major media corporations against the Sanders campaign and is fairly obvious evidence of that bias. In the entire interview there was only one mention of Bernie Sanders by name and that was by Thomas Roberts, the MSNBC interviewer. John Kasich was also not mentioned although a poll result for Governor Kasich was displayed in the Republican candidate poll results. To be fair, this interview was not an in depth discussion of each individual candidate but there was the predictable focus on Donald Trump.

One issue discussed in the interview was the difference in the perceived interest in, involvement with and predictability of the candidates, the major parties and the elections. It was noted that there is more focus on and interest in the Republican candidates. This was discussed with the implicit assumption that more interest is positive and less interest is negative. This is a sweeping generalization that most certainly does not automatically apply in this unprecedented and weird 2016 primary election.

Just because the Republican party presidential candidates are receiving more attention overall, almost completely because of the rather bizarre candidacy of Donald Trump does not mean that this attention is positive. Quite to the contrary. At the current time, this increased attention is based primarily on the attention to Donald Trump’s negative behavior. And his behavior and the conduct of his campaign is frequently terrible and a national embarrassment. This is increasingly causing national and now international serious concern at what is happening in this election cycle in the United States. To quote a phrase used by Trump himself….. “what the [h e double- tooth pick] is going on?” Sorry, this is a PG article.

A secondary source of the increased attention to the Republican presidential candidates is the imitative behavior by some of the other Republican presidential candidates of Trumpenstein’s unacceptable, immature and crude bad behavior. This is triggering a degradation of the standards of conduct by some of the other candidates, most notably Marco Rubio. His employment of this level of conduct in one of the recent Republican candidate debates is now widely perceived as failing and backfiring on him. His embrace of this tactic further degrades the process and was so bad that his own family expressed embarrassment at it and he repudiated his own engagement in this type of conduct.  The one candidate that is a positive exception to this mess is arguably the most qualified Republican candidate still conducting a campaign, Ohio governor John Kasich (pronounced K-sick)!

The situation in the Republican Party is now so bad that there is strong, open, direct conflict in the party with at least two factions in conflict, delineated directly by their relationship to the front- running candidate, Donald Trump. They are quite obviously the pro and anti Donald Trump groups. Some party members are now openly and strongly opposing Trump, their own front- runner, reminiscent of the “anyone but Romney” movement of the 2012 election cycle. Other Republicans are openly stating they will vote for a Democrat, refusing to vote for a person like Donald Trump for President. And they are admitting that this may cause the Republican candidate to lose and consider this to be a better alternative than having Trump as a Republican President. Wow! This is crazy. This is why the Republican candidates are attracting a lot of attention and this is not a positive development. Conservative columnist David Brooks has been critical of this scenario for months and has been lamenting the seriousness and negativity of this process in the Republican Party in 2016. It’s the train wreck you can’t stop watching even though the blood is spurting and the severed limbs are flying. Can Trumpenstein be over now, please? This is not funny anymore.

One last issue should be discussed to complete this article. Pinellas County R. E. C. Chair Nick DiCegile stated during this interview the following statement: “We are looking at a coronation of Hillary Clinton on the, on the left. Ah, and of course the super delegates and their very influential role in this process….. you can say it’s a, it’s a rigged system if you will. And again, it’s a coronation of, of Hillary Clinton on the left.” What? Nick DiCegile is either very uninformed or is deliberately ignoring or misrepresenting the facts regarding the Democratic Party presidential candidates. Either way, he is totally wrong. The election process is anything but a “coronation”. In fact, it is the exact opposite of that. There are strong, tough and persevering campaigns being conducted by Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party Primary elections, with a vigorous rivalry playing out in state after state across the country in the early primary election states. Were you in Iowa for the Iowa caucus? I was! Besides the party run caucus process being inherently less organized and more problem prone than a state run primary election, there was the obvious bias of the Democratic Party caucus for Hillary Clinton. Despite this, the Sanders campaign was competive with this so called “coronation”.  It was also interesting to note the dirty tricks of the “Christian” Cruz campaign originated “Voter Violation” form and the lie about the Carson campaign ending.  In February, the Sanders campaign raised $41.5 million with about $6 million of that amount raised in about 1 day! This was more than any other presidential candidate in either major party raised in February, 2016. With all these facts being obvious for weeks or months it is positively laughable to characterize the Democratic Party primary election process as a “coronation”. Next false statement please.