The Hillary Clinton campaign was caught in a rather humiliating blunder Thursday, as it was discovered that they bought air time on the Weather Channel in battleground states effected by Hurricane Matthew. Out of the only two networks to cover politics that evening only CBS had mentioned it, while ABC ignored it. “Clinton’s camp had to sidestep an embarrassment of its own. Reversing a recent move to increase campaign ads on the Weather Channel,” reported Major Garrett on CBS Evening News.
Garrett noted that the Clinton’s campaign’s 180 degree switch came after she was called out on twitter by the chairman of the Republican Party. “On Twitter, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Clinton was, “Exploiting Hurricane Matthew for political gain” and urged her to apologize,” Garrett continued, before moving on to end his report.
ABC was the only other network to report about politics Thursday evening, and they ignored Clinton’s snafu completely. Reporter Tom Llamas instead chose to do the beckoning of the Clinton campaign and run clip of the Democratic candidate’s softer side on World News Tonight. Llamas highlighted a moment from a recent town hall event Clinton held where she appeared to have a heart-to-heart with a little girl about bullying. “Her campaign points to moments like that one, where she hugged that little girl, a personal connection with voters,” Llamas touted.
Spanish-language network, Univision also got in on the act. During their brief coverage of American politics they chose to slam Donald Trump for his self-deportation policies.
Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer gave a stunning rebuttal of Clinton’s campaign tactics on Fox News’ Special Report. “Her reputation as somebody of unbridled ambition, everything has to fall in the path of her ambition to ascend,” he chided about the Clinton ad buys, “And to be talking about ad buys on a weather channel in a situation like this only reinforces that. That there is nothing there except ambition.”
Anchor Bret Baier observed that Clinton’s failed ad buy could hurt her in those critical states:
But, in all seriousness, this could effect, especially in those states, and those three states really, and you have got… really four, I mean you have got Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, a North Carolina. I mean, you’re talking about a lot of people potentially affected, and it factors in this close to an election.
NOTE: NBC was not included in this analysis because they dedicated all of NBC Nightly News to covering Hurricane Matthew.
