MSNBC anchor Joshua Johnson urges mainstream media not to influence Dem primary voters

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MSNBC anchor Joshua Johnson appeared to urge colleagues in the mainstream media not to help influence Democratic voters “from the top down” on Sunday during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Johnson, who recently left NPR for MSNBC, said the media and DNC pushed Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in 2016 and he’s curious to see if history will repeat itself.

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“So, one of the things I'm interested in seeing in 2020 is, how much we will allow Democrats to make their own choice? The story of who the party is supposed to support is not up to us, it's up to Democrats.”

NewsBusters analyst Nicholas Fondacaro noted that Johnson “gestured to the people sitting around the table,” implying that the MSNBC anchor feels media members try to shape the narrative for Democratic voters.

“It's up to Democrats. The fact that this process is murky is fine. Let them vote. It's OK for voters to make this decision,” Johnson added. “It's not comfortable. It makes it hard for us to prognosticate. But if there's one thing, at least, the people I talked to came out of 2016 feeling it’s that they were told what the narrative was supposed to be and they felt like votes were kind of being whipped from the top down.”

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MSNBC anchor Joshua Johnson urged media not to influence Democratic primary voters on Sunday during “Meet the Press.”

NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Kasie Hunt chimed in, “I hear you on that, but there's a lot of theories as to why Hillary Clinton lost in 2016.”

Hunt then claimed that “it was very clear way before that process was over” that Sanders wasn’t going to be the nominee in 2016 but he stayed in the race anyway, which could have damaged Clinton.

“This instance really exposed how much contempt the elitist liberal media had for the average voter, even on their own side. It will be interesting to see how else Johnson will rattle his colleagues,” Fondacaro wrote.

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Johnson made waves again later in the episode when the topic of African American voters came up and MSNBC’s newest hire criticized the lack of diversity among Democratic candidates.

“I can hear black voters saying, ‘If we're so important, why aren't we there? You're talking about us without us,’” Johnson said. “Cory Booker's gone. Kamala Harris is gone. Julian Castro's gone. You got one Asian guy on the [debate] stage and six well-meaning white people telling us what you're going to do for us when we weren't on the stage anymore.”