Chris Cuomo attends The Hollywood Reporter’s annual Most Powerful People in Media cocktail reception at The Pool on Thursday, April 11, 2019, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

If it wasn’t clear before the left’s/media’s deliberate distortion of Nikki Haley’s Confederate flag comments from last week, it should be now:

Democrats are scared of Haley and what her political ambitions might be for 2024. Because she represents the type of diversity within the GOP liberals and the mainstream media want to make people believe doesn’t exist.

It is with that in mind that we turn to CNN’s Chris Cuomo who, like so many others, ran with the fake news bait that Media Matters’ “journalist” Jason Campbell pushed Friday on his Twitter feed about remarks Haley made in an interview with Glenn Beck when asked about the Confederate flag.

Her comments were made in the context of a discussion about the mass murders of nine African American churchgoers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC in June 2015, which Haley wrote about in her new book.

To recap, watch the video after reading Campbell’s framing:

Nikki Haley says the Confederate flag was about "service, and sacrifice, and heritage" until Dylan Roof "hijacked" it pic.twitter.com/pqdhKIezRl

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) December 6, 2019

The video Campbell shared actually debunked his own argument, because Haley was specifically talking about the way she says others in South Carolina felt about the Confederate flag. She wasn’t talking about how she felt about it.

Nevertheless, Cuomo ran with it. In a “Closing Argument” rant that proved he fell for Campbell’s spin, Cuomo put the “jerk” in knee-jerk reactions by way of his commentary on the issue:

CUOMO: But now, Haley is floating a new theory about why the flag had to come down.
[…]
Haley knows one murderer didn’t co-opt that flag. He used it for what it is, like every other bigot and White extremist, these guys, the KKK, neo-Nazis, Right-wing nationalists.

And again, Haley knows this. This is the worst part. Here’s the proof.

HALEY (from an older interview): “It just never should have been there.

And these grounds are a place that should be that belonged to the people of South Carolina. And what I realize, now more than ever, is people were driving by, and they felt hurt, and pain. No one should feel pain.”

CUOMO: “Never should have been there.” She got it, and she should, because it was, is, and always has been obvious, especially as a family like hers, immigrants who felt the sting of being an “Other.”

So, the question is, why pump up this flag? Is she falling in line with this Trumpy forgetfulness of what bigotry is, the malignancy of it? Is she trying to curry favor with certain voters like the leader of her Party does?

It was really one of the most unhinged rants I’ve ever seen him go on, and that’s saying a lot. Watch it to get the full effect:

"Service, sacrifice, and heritage?" @ChrisCuomo objects to Nikki Haley's new theory about why the Confederate flag had to come down.

"Service to slavery. The sacrifice of the slaves. And the heritage of slavery," he said. pic.twitter.com/FgUNZwA4Bb

— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) December 7, 2019

The thing is, regardless of what anyone thinks of her 2015 stance on the flag, it is not inconsistent with what she told Beck. Saying “it never should have been there” because people “felt pain” when they were driving past it does not conflict with what she told Beck (below):

“Here is this guy that comes out with his manifesto, holding the Confederate flag. And had just hijacked everything that people thought of .. and we don’t have hateful people in South Carolina. There’s always the small minority that’s always gonna be there. But people saw [the flag] as service and sacrifice and heritage. But once he did that, there was no way to overcome it.”

In other words, she’s saying there were people who viewed the flag as a symbol of heritage but in previous remarks noted that others felt pain when they drove by it.

At the end of the segment, though, Cuomo accidentally admitted the truth behind his ramblings:

Nikki Haley, please, tell us you didn’t mean it, tell us that you haven’t surrendered the truth for some Trumpy notion of popularity. So many saw you as the hope for the future of your Party. Don’t stand as proof that hope is lost. That’s the argument tonight.

In reality, Cuomo knows Haley’s stance from 2015 to now hasn’t changed, but he also knows Republicans have looked to her as a possible contender in a future presidential election. What Cuomo would like for Haley to do is to move on over to the center-left lane, which would mean she wouldn’t win a lot of GOP presidential primaries.

You might think people don’t know what you’re up to, Chris Cuomo, but we do. We see you.

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— Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 16+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter. –