It's getting tougher out there for a Trump surrogate.
It's almost enough to feel bad for Trumper Brad Thomas, who is on to desperately pivot away from the fact that he's been championing a Nazi-apologizing white supremacist by claiming credit for all manner of economic good done by the Orangey McSmallHands. Almost.
But Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle aren't having it on their show. When you spend your morning rage-tweeting about "beautiful" confederate statues and history, maybe that's not the time to send out surrogates to insist that you're working hard for the American people. Even when Thomas tries to "conservative"splain how the economy is strong, thanks to Donald Trump, Velshi points out that he's taking credit for economic growth that has steadily been climbing due to Obama policies to pull us back from the brink of economic collapse in 2009. "This market started going up on March 9th, 2009," Velshi retorts, "and if you have a ruler, it's a pretty much straight line from there to now. There is nothing Donald Trump has done to cause the market to be where it is right now."
Clearly, this is going to be a fact-based segment, not one in which the hosts allow the Trump surrogate to claim anything they want without pushback. How odd. It's almost as if Velshi and Ruhle are interested in accurate information getting to their viewers. Maybe they could share that trait with their colleague Chuck Todd?
Still, Thomas gamely tries to keep going, insisting that the Mr. "Art of the Deal" is bringing jobs (even though he couldn't even keep his jobs council together). But again, those facts just get in the way. Velshi interrupts the talking points with an exasperated, "I've given you evidence that the job creation is not as good under President Trump as it was under President Obama, President Bush, President Clinton in the first six months of their office. I've given you evidence that stock market performance was better under President Obama but you just deny it and go on to say other things."
At this point, Thomas has little choice but to pull his white male privilege and talk down to the hosts with a reported FIFTY years of combined economic/investing experience, leaving them to deny him what every other Trump surrogate has been given when booked on the 24 hour cable networks: "You can't just lie on TV. I don't know if your people told you who you were coming on TV with but you can't lie about the economy to us." Sputtering, Thomas tries to pivot back to the talking points again, but this interview is officially off the rails. Velshi is not going to give him a break.
"You should fire your press person. If they didn't tell you were coming on TV with Velshi and Ruhle, we've been doing this for 50 years. This is a silly conversation to have with us. You can go to other people's media and say these things but not to us. We cover this every day, in and out. and the fact is those CEOs got pressure from their shareholders, boards and customers, who said, 'We can't stand next to this president who is embracing neo-Nazis. How is that good for business?"
The entire segment is EXACTLY what we should have seen from the media with Trump surrogates from the beginning.
