Gabbard on CNN Town Hall Snub: “Excluding the First Female Combat Veteran Ever to Run for President”

Gabbard on CNN Town Hall Snub: “Excluding the First Female Combat Veteran Ever to Run for President”

CNN is holding a series of town hall events with Democratic candidates ahead of the New Hampshire primary. For some unknown reason, the network excluded Tulsi Gabbard.

This would be understandable if CNN were following some threshold rule, like the ones the DNC is using for primary debates, but they’re clearly not doing that because the two-night event is including lower polling candidates like Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer. Even Deval Patrick, who barely registers in the polls, is invited.

Joe Concha writes at The Hill:

Gabbard says she’s received no reason from CNN for lack of invitation to town halls

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) says she’s received no explanation or response from CNN regarding not being invited to a series of town halls the network is hosting in New Hampshire days before a crucial primary there in February.

Gabbard is currently polling at 4.8 percent in the RealClearPolitics index of polls in New Hampshire, ahead of tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, businessman Tom Steyer and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Yang, Steyer and Patrick, along with former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) all received invites to participate in the two-night event.

“We have reached out, I think, more than once, and we received no explanation,” Gabbard told Fox News on Tuesday.

Gabbard addresses the issue in the video below:

Asked about not being invited to the @CNN town halls next week in NH, @TulsiGabbard tells @foxnewspolitics “we received no explanation. I don’t even think we’ve gotten a response to date about why they’re excluding the first female combat veteran ever to run for president” #FITN pic.twitter.com/njxusUoXWt

— Paul Steinhauser (@steinhauserNH1) January 28, 2020

FOX News has more on this:

Gabbard’s numbers in national polls and in Iowa, which holds the first contest in the presidential nomination calendar, are in the low single digits. But in New Hampshire — where the candidate is spending almost all of her time on the campaign trail — she’s at 5 percent in the latest RealClearPolitics average of the latest surveys in the Granite State. That’s ahead of Steyer and Patrick, who were both invited to the town halls…

In the interview, Gabbard committed to staying in New Hampshire through primary day. She said that she would be in the Granite State rather than in Iowa on Feb. 3, the night the caucuses will be held.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Iowa earlier on in the campaign, and we are here in New Hampshire for the duration all the way through election day on Feb. 11,” she said.

Between this and the apparent assist CNN gave Elizabeth Warren against Bernie Sanders in the last debate, it’s hard to dismiss the idea that the network is trying to manipulate the Democratic primary.

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