It's always a good day when a Republican applies the number-one rule when speaking to any journalist: Never accept their false premises. 

Tom Cotton showed exactly how that's done on Sunday when he appeared with ABC News' resident hack, Jonathan Karl. During an exchange in which Cotton mentioned several of Kamala Harris' radical policy positions, Karl insisted that she no longer supports ending private health insurance. The Arkansas senator was ready and waiting for that line. 

ALSO SEE: Tom Cotton Points Out the Media's Coddling of Kamala Harris

Tom Cotton applies the number one rule when dealing with the press in this clip: Never accept their false premises.

Karl insists Harris has changed her position on eliminating private health insurance, and Cotton takes him to the cleaners. pic.twitter.com/Ylq37mDRIw

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) August 25, 2024

COTTON: And President Trump is going to draw a sharp contrast with Kamala Harris, who has supported things like decriminalizing illegal immigration, or giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens, or taking away health insurance on the job for 170 million Americans, banning gas cars, confiscating firearms.

KARL: What do you mean taking away health insurance? What are you talking about? 

COTTON: She said when she ran for president that she wants to eliminate private health insurance on the job for 170 million Americans, Jon. 

KARL: Yeah, I mean, that is not her position now, she has...

COTTON: How do you know that's not her position? How do you know that's not her position? 

KARL: I mean, she says she no longer supports Medicare for all.

COTTON: She has not said that. She has not said that. Maybe anonymous aides on a Friday night have said that, but the last thing that she said...

KARL: This was not a radical convention. I mean, she, she, she, as you heard me go through with Bernie Sanders, she is not taking positions of the far-left of her party. She is clearly making an effort to move to the middle. 

COTTON: I did hear what you said to Sen. Sanders, and I thought it was clear that he was very disappointed that she's taking these efforts not to change her positions, but to hide her positions, Jon. The American people are totally justified to conclude that Kamala Harris is a dangerous San Francisco liberal based on what she campaigned on the last time she ran for president and what this administration has done in the last four years. 

Again, you would have thought watching the Democratic convention last week that the Democrats are not in office. That they're not in power. That they're campaigning against an incumbent Republican when in reality, she's been part of the failures of the Biden-Harris administration for four years, and when she campaigned for president in her rite [sic], she did in fact promise things like decriminalizing illegal immigration and taking away health insurance 

KARL: That's a position she's clearly changed on, and she said she has changed...

COTTON: No, she hasn't 

KARL: Yes, yes, she has. 

COTTON: No, Jon, she has not said that.

The only thing I can give Karl credit for in that clip is that he remained an absolute hack until the bitter end of the segment. Other than that, he got his clock cleaned by Cotton, who did his homework and was ready to knock down the press' attempts to play propaganda arm for Harris. 

How can a self-described "journalist" sit there and claim multiple times that Harris has changed her position on decriminalizing illegal immigration and eliminating private healthcare, when she's done zero interviews and zero press conferences since starting her presidential campaign? She also hasn't released an official policy platform. Since when is a nominee allowed to flip-flop via Friday-night news dumps through anonymous aides without any question? 

It is embarrassing that members of the press like Karl are not only allowing her to get away with that, but they are playing PR agent for her under the guise of news. That he then went on to play PR agent for the DNC, claiming it was not a radical conference, is just as bad. Since when is it his job to play defense for political conventions? 

As I said, though, Cotton followed the number-one rule by rejecting the entire premise. That left Karl robotically parroting the same line over and over because once you knock a journalist off their game, they've got nothing left. Members of the press are lazy. They don't do any actual research. They go in with the talking points provided for them, and if a Republican successfully counters them, they get flustered and frustrated. Cotton kept his cool, countered the lies, and made Karl look ridiculous.