Brazile breaks it down

You had to hang in there after the debate to catch last night’s highlight — Megyn Kelly’s interview of Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile. Kelly asked Brazile about the Project Veritas video showing frequent White House visitor Robert Creamer explaining the role he played inciting violence at Trump rallies on behalf of the DNC and the Clinton campaign. The video of Kelly interviewing Brazile following the debate is below.

Creamer’s departure from Democracy Partners yesterday lends a certain credence to the Project Veritas video. So does the firing of Scott Foval of Americans United for Change, the other star of the Project Veritas video. Dave Weigel reports on the departures of Creamer and Foval from their organizations yesterday in the wake of the video’s release in the Washington Post story “Two Democratic operatives lose jobs after James O’Keefe sting.”

Brazile hemmed and hawed her way through her response to Kelly’s questions on the Project Veritas video. She referred to a convicted criminal sneaking around her office at the DNC. Kelly mischievously asks, would that be Robert Creamer? No, that would be James O’Keefe, Brazile explains, although the explanation also seems to lend credence to the Project Veritas video.

Brazile takes a detour to praise Hillary Clinton’s performance in the debate and then wanders back to her stream of consciousness on O’Keefe. “You feel very strongly about an impostor walking into our office, trying to get staffers to do x and y and then come up with this video,” Brazile tells Kelly.

“I want to make sure every American has the right to vote on election day,” Brazile adds. She seems to be free associating. She also starts calling her Kelly, as though Kelly is her first name.

“Let’s be clear,” Kelly responds, “I said nothing about my feelings….I wasn’t the one who fired these two staffers. The Democrats fired these two staffers. Obviously they believe some wrongdoing took place.” Good point.

“They stepped aside,” Brazile says, suggesting that they weren’t fired. Well, okay.

“No one so far has come out to challenge the legitimacy of these particular tapes,” Kelly responds. “In fact, they’ve acted on them.” Again, good point.

Invited to challenge the video, Brazile simply reverts to the ad hominem. “Mr. O’Keefe enjoys falsifying records.”

“What about in this case?” Kelly asks. Good question.

Brazile undertakes evasive maneuvers. “Kelly, can I ask you, we’re at a presidential debate. Donald Trump made several ridiculous claims tonight.”

“You’re dodging,” Kelly sagely observes.

“I don’t play dodgeball, honey, I play basketball,” Brazile interjects. “And I’m just trying to tell you, he tried to score on misinformation. He’s trying to score on information that was obtained illegally.”

Is that a foul in basketball?

Kelly then tries to extract an answer from Brazile about her feeding a question that would be asked of Clinton in a CNN town hall forum. Kelly asks, where did you get the question?

The exchange here is equally entertaining. I will just say that, Brazile to the contrary notwithstanding, dodgeball seems to be the order of the day, or someone should call a foul on Brazile for trying to score with misinformation.

Quotable quote: “As a Christian woman, I understand persecution. I will not sit here and be persecuted….You’re like a thief that wanna bring into the night the things that you found that were in his [?] gutter….I am not going to try to validate falsified information. I have my documents. I have my files. Thank God I have not had my personal e-mails ripped off from me and stolen and given to some criminals to come back altered. I have my records and files. And as I said repeatedly, CNN, I never received anything.”

Via RealClearPolitics.

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