October 13, 2016: As of Wednesday morning, the Big Three networks’ morning and evening newscasts have yet to cover the Tuesday revelation that the Clinton campaign’s communications director — along with a close associate of the campaign’s chairman, John Podesta — bashed Catholicism and evangelical Christianity in an e-mail conversation in 2011. The latter, John Halpin of the left-wing Center for American Progress, denounced the “severely backwards gender relations” inside the Catholic Church. The former, Jennifer Palmieri, replied with a negative remark about evangelicals.
Courtesy of RMC
Two cable news networks one-upped their broadcast competitors by devoting air time to the Halpin-Palmieri exchange. A panel on Tuesday’s Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN discussed the e-mails for over two minutes. Fox News Channel’s Kelly File actually led their Tuesday newscast with a three minute and 17-second report on how “key Hillary Clinton staffers [are] now taking heat over an e-mail exchange that lashes out at two major faith groups.”
Anchor Megyn Kelly led into correspondent Trace Gallagher’s report by reading excerpts from the conversation, which was published by Wikileaks: “At one point…Halpin writes his colleagues about conservatives and the Church, writing — quote, ‘It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations.’ Clinton campaign manager John Podesta describes himself as a practicing Catholic. He does not respond directly to the conversation in the documents we have, but we’re still waiting to hear the campaign’s explanation for all of this.”
It should be pointed out that on Wednesday morning, EWTN’s Jason Calvi uncovered a February 2012 e-mail from Podesta himself where he bragged about how he, along with others, “created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this….Likewise Catholics United.” Both groups purport to be Catholic, but have been criticized for their heterodox, pro-Democratic Party activism.
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