On Meet The Press, under the disguise of breaking down the publishing primary, Chuck Todd defended Ted Cruz as he left out key facts and called the exclusion of Cruz from the NYT bestseller list “conspicuous.”
Video:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Transcript via Meet The Press:
CHUCK TODD: Well, if you follow politics, you know there are lots of ways for candidates to measure success. One of them is how well their books are selling, books they may or may not have written themselves to introduce themselves to a public that may or may not care. As you can see here, we have a whole bunch of books here for the 2016 book primary.
So how are they doing? Well, Ben Carson’s latest book has proven to be the biggest of winners with 363,000 hardcover copies sold, according to Nielson. That’s not a typo. Americans seem to heart Huckabee, as well. Mike Huckabee has sold nearly 66,000 copies of his book.
But not all these presidential candidates are doing well. Marco Rubio and Jim Webb, both Rubio and Webb have sold only 8,000 copies each of those memoirs. Which brings us to Ted Cruz. This book here, A Time For Truth, sold nearly 12,000 copies in its first week alone, more than all but two nonfiction books, political or otherwise.
So it should put him at the top of the all-important New York Times Bestseller List, right? Wrong. Try to find it this morning. The Times conspicuously omitted it, claiming sales of Cruz book, quote, “Were limited to strategic bulk purchases.” Cruz’s publisher Harper Collins says The Times is wrong. They claim they were no bulk purchases at all.
Cruz’s campaign has its own idea of what’s behind The Times’s decision, suggesting it was, quote, “A naked fabrication designed to cover up your partisan agenda.” I’m not sure that’s going to help Ted Cruz get on The New York Times Bestseller List, or get The Times’ endorsement. Then again, I’m not sure Cruz thought he was going to get The Times endorsement. Coming up, the latest on those Iran nuclear talks. And then a look at the Republican candidate with a big edge that no one else has.
Chuck Todd ignored a ton of facts while defending Ted Cruz. First, about that Ben Carson book that Todd was gushing over. A Carson supporting super PAC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying up copies of his book. Secondly, Todd was comparing the sales numbers for Carson’s more than year old book with other books that were published weeks and months ago. He was not making an apples to apples comparison.
It was clear that Todd was carrying water for Ted Cruz by calling the Times decision to keep Cruz off of their bestseller list conspicuous. There was nothing odd about the decision when it is taken into account that Republican candidates have been cheating their way on to the bestseller list for years.
Chuck Todd has admitted that he turns a blind eye to facts to keep Republicans coming on his show. Todd plays dumb on a regular basis because he needs Republicans to come on Meet The Press, but his refusal to acknowledge that candidates try to game the bestseller lists on a regular basis was dumbfounding.
The fact is that the Cruz campaign continues to whine about The New York Times, but they have not provided a single piece of evidence to back up their claims. For Chuck Todd, Republicans denying facts is good enough, but the rest of us want the proof. If Ted Cruz has proof that The New York Times is wrong, he needs to release it. Otherwise, any media member who supports Cruz in this empty crusade is either a blind partisan or prostituting themselves for access.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
