Stephanie Ruhle, host of "The 11th Hour" on MSNBC, explained recently that Donald Trump was far more accessible as a candidate than Kamala Harris.
So approachable was he that Ruhle decided on a whim to call and ask for an interview, which he promptly declined. But still, he answered the phone. That's the point.
Even if he shot her down in typical Trump fashion.
“If I were to want to connect with VP Harris or President Biden, there’s 50 people between me, and that I could write a note that maybe could get to somebody to get somebody that (through) Pony Express and a pigeon, something might end up in a mailbox near them," Ruhle said in an interview with Lukas Thimm.
Yet, getting in touch with Trump was as easy as picking up her phone and dialing.
Ruhe said she "rolled the dice" and called Trump after the "crazy rally" at Madison Square Garden, "And he answered!”
"I called; I said I want an interview. Obviously, he said no. But my point is, I was able to get to him by dialing his phone," she explained. "Now that might be completely apes**t, and you’re like, ‘I can’t believe people know this guy’s phone number.'"
Ruhle lamented that the contrast was quite clear: Trump — open to the media, Harris — not so much.
"And I called DJT to say, ‘Yo, can I get an interview?’ and he told me to go f**k myself, but I still was able to connect with him," she recalled. "Yeah.”
MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle says Trump was far more accessible as a candidate than Kamala was.
— Rusty (@Rusty_Weiss) December 18, 2024
"He told me to go f**k myself, but I still was able to connect with him. Yeah.” pic.twitter.com/5Z6R6myvtM
It's that last part that makes you laugh, right? It's most likely the president-elect simply politely declined to do an interview with an anchor of an MSNBC show that gets near-zero ratings.
But there's still that part of you that wants to laugh thinking, maybe — just maybe — he actually told Ruhle to "Go f**k yourself."
As RedState's Becky Noble reported, Ruhle and the rest of the Island of Misfit journalists at MSNBC have been suffering with their ratings in the Trump 47 era.
Noble writes that the Tuesday before Thanksgiving yielded MSNBC the lowest-rated non-holiday weekday since July 19, 2004, at a mere 38,000 average viewers in the highly-coveted 25-54 age demographic.
Ruhle's show saw the lowest "total viewers ever."
Liberal Media Keeps Taking It on the Chin As MSNBC Takes Ratings Face Plant With Young People
Ruhle, in her post-election analysis, suggests the media lost credibility by sitting there like "fat chickens" on X while right-wingers took shots at their perpetual disinformation.
She recently equated the acquittal of Marine hero Daniel Penny to the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO, saying both cases were a celebration of violence.
Trump has previously referred to the MSNBC anchor as the “dumb as a rock bimbo Stephanie Ruhle."
As for the issue of media accessibility, Trump seems to concur. Harris refused to make herself available to even friendly mainstream media outlets. Instead, she opted to take softball interviews sharing beers with Stephen Colbert, chatting it up with the ladies of "The View," and joining a sex podcast called "Call Her Daddy."
"I think they made a big tactical mistake by literally not talking to the press, even if a really friendly...a friendly interview, and they turned everybody down. They wouldn't do the basic," Trump said of the Harris campaign's media strategy.
"And people, including me, would start to say, is there something wrong with her? What's wrong? Why wouldn't you do some basic interviews?"
When Harris finally ventured into more hostile waters — an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, for example — it was a trainwreck.
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