All posts tagged "abby phillip"

'Unmistakably extraordinary': CNN hosts gush over Obamas after powerful DNC speeches

CNN anchors Dana Bash and Abby Phillip lauded Barack and Michelle Obama following their powerful speeches at the Democratic National Convention.

Talking with the two after the pair of speeches, fellow anchor Jake Tapper noted that the Obamas celebrated Harris and the convention, but that it's time for Democrats to get to work.

"Both of them were giving the unmistakable message to the crowd: yes, this is fun. We're having a great time. This is very exciting. But this is not what the next 77 days are going to look like," said Tapper, paraphrasing the Obamas with a laugh. "This is going to be tough. Your candidates are going to make mistakes. The other side is going to fight like hell."

Bash agreed with Tapper, noting that both spoke to the Democratic base, the energized grassroots, but also to swing voters, undecided voters and Ronald Reagan-era Republicans.

ALSO READ: Why Kamala Harris may get a big convention polling ‘bounce’

She praised Barack Obama as "unmistakably extraordinary."

"There's no Republican who would say anything different," she said. But it was Michelle who seemed to land even better with the audience.

"When Michelle Obama was speaking," she said, looking over to Phillip, "we were talking — we couldn't hear."

Phillip echoed Bash's remark.

"That was the loudest this arena had gotten," Phillip said.

"This place was going absolutely nuts," added Bash, particularly over one line that Michelle Obama said.

"When she talked about the fact that he dislikes them effectively for one reason," said Bash. "And that is because they are Black. That's effectively what she said."

Michelle "twisted the knife" when she said they have the "Black jobs," added Bash.

Phillip called the Obamas "two of the best players in politics right now."

"Two people who can speak in ways that almost no one else in the party can speak," she said. "Particularly Michelle Obama. That speech really electrified this arena. I don't even think Barack Obama — no offense to him, his speech was excellent — it was not received in the same way. I think we just have to be honest by that."

‘Change the sheets’: Conservative on CNN profanely slams Trump’s race remarks on Harris

Donald Trump made a major misstep by attacking Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ racial identity during a conference for Black journalists Wednesday, conservative political analyst and former White House deputy director of political affairs Scott Jennings told a CNN panel.

“He did crap the bed today. The only question is whether he's going to roll around in it or get up and change the sheets,” Jennings said during CNN host Abby Phillip’s Wednesday night broadcast of "NewsNight."

“My advice would be: get up and change the sheets," he said.

Jennings rebuke is the latest in a torrent of backlash against Trump over the calamitous interrogation at a Chicago National Association for Black Journalists conference which ended with his own team abruptly cutting off the interview. Jennings says a better strategy for the Trump campaign would be to attack Harris on her policies and record, not her race.

“This is not going to end the way he wants it to end,” Jennings said. “There’s a better way to do this and they know what to do but it’s on him to do it.”

Later on in the panel discussion, commentator Ashley Allison riffed on Jennings analogy, saying that Trump’s inflammatory race remarks may have landed better in 2016 than they do now.

“Donald Trump is sloppy with his words, quite honestly,” Allison said, eliciting laughs from the rest of the panel “Now its old and old slop is messy, and it stinks, and it's nasty and you need to clean it up.”

Watch the clip below or at this link.

'Off the rails': CNN host says Trump self-destructed and echoed 'birther' remarks

Former President Donald Trump revealed a side of himself that he has desperately tried to hide from Black voters in his tense exchange with reporters at Wednesday's gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists, CNN's Abby Phillip told Jake Tapper.

The question-and-answer session, which had Trump questioning Vice President Kamala Harris' race and calling the journalists "horrible" and "nasty," even left some right-wing outlets and commentators scrambling to do damage control.

"Trump made this bizarre claim that Kamala Harris, quote, 'happened to turn Black,'" said Tapper. "She's obviously identified as Black. Yes, her mom is Indian and her father Jamaican, but she's obviously identified as Black for her whole life. She went to Howard, for God's sake. That's not really outreach to the Black community?"

"I mean, it's really not," agreed Phillip, who went on, "I think that one of the things about this decision of Trump's to come to NABJ, it's based on this premise that he is making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men. But when the rubber meets the road, I think that the Trump that was on display on that stage is really pretty consistent with what he has been saying all along."

She noted that Trump's questioning of Harris' race echoed his "birther" conspiracy theories from over a decade before that former President Barack Obama might not be an American citizen.

"I'll also say ... I think that when we described this as going off the rails, we should be clear, Trump was the one who seemed to lose control of the situation from the beginning," said Phillip. "The questions were there, and they were very clear. I mean, he was asked about whether he would pardon January 6th rioters. He said that he would, including the ones who assaulted police officers. He was asked about a very high-profile case going on right now involving a Black woman who was killed by a police officer. He didn't know about the case, and he seemed to suggest that the officer involved might qualify for immunity."

"So there were a lot of moments that I don't think were very beneficial to Donald Trump in this interview, but were nevertheless incredibly important to hear from his own mouth, because he is not getting asked about these questions when he goes on the friendly interviews that he's been doing quite a lot of over the last few weeks," Phillip added.

Watch the video below or at the link here.

Abby Phillip on Trump's NABJ meetingwww.youtube.com