THE ELITES OF AMERICA

John Dickerson

Usually, I avoid the Sunday morning interview and panel shows, but this morning, I watched Face the Nation with moderator John Dickerson.  The quotes below are from the transcript of the show this morning.

First up was a brief interview with Bernie Sanders, but CBS had given away the best lines from the interview on Saturday, so there was little that was new to me.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) followed.  Johnson supports Trump, but he has his knickers in a bit of a twist over the Muslim ban.  Still, Trump is better than socialism and big government.

The pundit panel offers the same soul-destroying experience that caused me to stop watching years ago.  The participants in the panel may change, but the soul-destruction goes on.  Today, the panel included Jeffery Goldberg, Ruth Marcus, Ron Brownstein,  Mark Leibovich, and last, but not least, Peggy Noonan.

After the folks around the table finished a round of Clinton bashing about the emails, they moved on to Trump.  Conclusion: Trump won't pivot away from his fly by the seat of his pants strategy, because he is simply not able to do so.  His base loves his wildness in saying whatever pops into his head, and that is what gained him the nomination.  Why change what gave him his victory?

Peggy Noonan won first place as the star of the panel show, by offering a few moments of comic relief from the soul-destruction.

Noonan:But I still think the big story that we're talking about here in the e-mail thing is very, very simple. Americans don't really trust Mrs. Clinton to be forthcoming and truthful. That's all in the polls. I forget what words they are, but you know what I mean. When you look at the tape of Mrs. Clinton saying things about the e-mails that have been shown to not of them true in the IG thing, she has been -- I hate to say lied, but she has lied coolly and -- in a creamy, practiced way. It doesn't look good.

Peggums, Peggums, be honest: You know you liked saying "...she lied", or you would not have said it twice. You lie in a not-so-creamy, not-so-practiced way.

Later an exchange about Trump's attack on New Mexico Gov. Suzana Martinez:

NOONAN: And when he makes fun of the official elites of America, in no matter what way, they kind of like it because they don't like us.

BROWNSTEIN: And Mexicans Americans are not the elites of America.

NOONAN: Under -- no, no, but a big personal like Martinez -- do you know what I mean?

Peggums, I get that you think you're among the official elites of America, but, other than that, I don't know what you mean.

I remember Nancy Dickerson, John Dickerson's mother, who was a pioneer as the first woman to appear in in major news broadcasting outlets in the 1950s, and it seems John fell rather far from the tree.

Image from Wikipedia.