The Republican Party is highly and thoroughly pissed off at CNN and NBC for their upcoming film projects on the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. They are in fact so angry, that they’ve now issued threats of revenge against both networks.
On Friday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus blasted the networks for their plans to produce separate biopics on the former First Lady and former Secretary of State. Apparently, Republicans are so fearful that Hillary will run for president again in 2016 (and win), that they want to seize any and every advantage she might have — even before she’s made any sort of formal announcement.
Angry words flew late last week, as Priebus told CNN and NBC that as punishment for the Hillary projects, he will prevent both networks from hosting any presidential debates:
“There are forces out there that want to divide our party. But we’re not going to let them get in the way of our mission—whether they’re naysayers or news networks. That’s why we said to the media, with a united voice, that a network that spends millions to spotlight Hillary Clinton is a network with an obvious bias. And that’s a network that won’t be hosting a single Republican primary debate.”
CNN responded by saying:
“CNN Films, a division of CNN Worldwide, commissioned a documentary about Hillary Clinton earlier this year. It is expected to premiere in 2014 with a theatrical run prior to airing on CNN. The CNN broadcast date has not been determined. This documentary will be a non-fiction look at the life of a former First Lady and Secretary of State. The project is in the very early stages of development, months from completion with most of the reporting and the interviewing still to be done. Therefore speculation about the final program is just that. We encouraged all interested parties to wait until the program premieres before judgments are made about it. Unfortunately, the RNC was not willing to do that.”
NBC also provided the following response:
“NBC News is completely independent of NBC Entertainment and has no involvement in this project. NBC Entertainment has many projects in development and this particular mini-series – which has nothing to do with the NBC News division – is in the very early stages. The script has not been written nor has it been ordered to production. It would be premature to draw any conclusions or make any assumptions about it at this time.”
This is a dumb move for the Repubs. Aren't they supposed to be trying to bring people into the party? Shutting out two of the big networks is just going to backfire.