August 15, 2019

Trump-worshipping Harris Faulkner was especially delighted when her Julian Castro-bashing “Democratic” guest took a gratuitous swipe at the Russia investigation in the middle of attacking Castro’s ad.

Outnumbered Overtime host Faulkner, who attacked critics of Trump’s Charlottesville remarks, was predictably angered by Castro’s ads which are airing on the network throughout the day, in Bedminster, N.J., where Slacker in Chief Donald Trump is taking yet another golf vacation at our expense.

Castro’s ad blames Trump’s “s***hole countries” rhetoric, his “go back” tweets and his charactrization of immigrants as “rapists” for having “stoked the fire of racists” that resulted in the El Paso massacre that targeted Mexicans. “Words have consequences. ¡Ya basta!” Castro says, in conclusion.

Not surprisngly, the show trotted out a Democrat-attacking Democrat to discuss the ad, in this case Robin Biro.

“I don’t necessarily have an issue” with Castro’s ad, Biro said, but he quickly segued into criticizing its strategy. “The most logical thing to have done would just be to pull the FBI crime stats, the hate crime stats and show the correlation behind the rhetoric from this president and the increase in hate crimes directly after some of these harsh tweets from the president and things like that.”

Obviously, that didn’t do enough of the anti-Castro hit job Faulkner was hoping for. “I hear what you’re saying,” she said. “You’re saying look at some of the statistics. But what Castro does in this ad is he uses the president’s name in his own mouth and he attacks with a call of racism. And so, and by large, lifts his own profile. Does that work for a candidate?”

Faulkner's voice dripped with such skepticism, it would have been nearly impossible for Biro to have missed the hint.

And oh, look! He took it. That allowed African American Faulkner to cover for Trump's bigotry.

BIRO: Like I said, I just don’t think it’s good strategy. I don’t think it works because he’s not backing it up with facts and statistics so that we can have an intelligent conversation in America which needs to happen. So if you just throw out these grenades of racism without backing it up, I think it falls on ears that are tone-deaf. Frankly, we use this a little bit too much. We need to be having a conversation about how hate crimes are going up.FAULKNER: Well, you don’t have to preach to me how often I hear the word “racism.” At this point, as a person of color, I mean, you’re right, I think people become anesthetized to it when they actually see it.

That would have been the perfect opportunity for Biro to point out that we have seen so much racism from Trump, it has become almost normalized and that’s the real point of Castro’s ad. At the least, "fact-loving" Biro could have pointed out how the El Paso suspect’s manifesto echoed Trump’s language.

Yet Biro said nothing of the sort. Harris went on to suggest Castro put out the ad in desperation. “He’s got to REALLLLY work” to get into the next Democratic debate, she said, citing his low polling.

Biro was on board with that messaging. “That’s exactly what I was thinking as far as the strategy,” he agreed.

“Why not ideas, Robin?” Faulkner all but shouted. “You came from an administration where you guys were saying go high when they go low.”

Biro chuckled. “You just hit the nail on the head and that’s my point, exactly,” he said. Then he gratuitously attacked the Russia investigation. “When you just throw these claims out, it just becomes sort of like the boy who cries wolf and we’ve heard it too many times, sort of like the Russian collusion narrative,” he said.

Faulkner murmured a loud “MMMM” in approval.

“It becomes something that once you’ve heard it so many times, I think it loses its effectiveness. We need to be having conversations about the actual policy and the numbers and like the Dow just went down, what, 650 points?" Biro continued.

“Interesting,” Faulkner said. “It makes you wonder if Mr. Castro might be out of those kinds of ideas that you’re talking about. “

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