Last night I noted that CNN really lived down to its fake news reputation when it featured as an “undecided” voter a left-leaning professor from Swarthmore, Carol Nackenhoff. I concluded that “the chance that she is considering voting for Donald Trump is zero-point-zero. If she’s technically undecided, it is because she might be considering casting her vote for Jill Stein instead of Harris.”
Today Nackenhoff outed herself in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, throwing CNN under the bus by confirming my conclusion:
As Anderson Cooper made clear, I am a registered Democrat. This is not a secret. I’m not trying to hide that. But I am angry with the Democrats over Biden’s willingness to send all sorts of weapons to Netanyahu and his generals, which they are then using to kill an enormous number of civilians. I was hoping that Harris might put some daylight between her position and Biden’s on this issue, and I’m not hearing it. But voting for Trump was not on my agenda. There are people who have jumped to that conclusion. [Emphasis added.]
Chronicle: So you were deciding between Harris and a third-party candidate? Or sitting it out, perhaps.
How was she selected for this Town Hall of “undecided” voters?
Chronicle: How did you wind up participating in the town hall?
I do not know how or why I was contacted for this particular event. Some of the participants said that they had answered a survey about their views of the upcoming election, and that that was what CNN had had access to as they were looking for undecided voters. I didn’t answer any surveys. So this came to my mailbox and, of course, I was interested in the event. You had to write questions. I think that they picked [people to participate] partly on the basis of the questions that you asked. My first question was on something I cared a great deal about — Gaza, the war in the Middle East. But they said they had picked somebody else to ask a question like that, and they selected the question that I asked.
So CNN not only pre-selected these voters, but which questions they’d be allowed to ask. But somehow CNN reached out to Nackenhoff? Riiiiight. More:
Chronicle: What would you say to someone who looks at you and says, “This is a registered Democrat who taught at a historically liberal campus. How can she be undecided?” Some people have speculated online that you were a plant.
Well, you should ask CNN how they picked people. What would I be a plant for? My question was quite straightforward. I don’t see how people wouldn’t want to know the answer to a question like that. So what in the world would I be a plant to do?
People who don’t know me, and who are just assuming that I’m considering a vote for Trump, think I can’t possibly be a serious student of the Constitution, etc., etc. I care very much about threats to democracy and the degradation of democratic norms.
Fake news and fake voters all the way down.
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