Francesca Hong CNN This Morning 8-11-26

Francesca Hong has given a perfect illustration of Michael Kinsley's aphorism: "A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth." 

Tuesday's CNN This Morning played a clip of the radical DSA candidate, the favorite to win Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial primary, supposedly walking back her insanely radical positions. 

In the clip, she offers this defense of her past calls to defund the police, abolish the U.S. Senate, and cancel Thanksgiving: 

"I learned then you have some hot takes, sometimes bad takes, on Twitter, and I let my feelings out into the world." 

Francesca, Francesca! You let your feelings out? Do you realize you just admitted the crazy stuff is actually how you feel? 

Host Audie Cornish did her best to cushion the admission. Offering a variation on the progressive "Woke 1.0 was crazy" retreat, Cornish said: 

"The 2020s were a time, and the hashtag activism was a time, and people were just like, 'Defund, send!' you know, like, and it was everywhere." 

"The 2020s were a time?" We're still in the 2020s. 

But nice try, Audie. 

 

Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright then kvetched that Democratic candidates are held accountable for their past statements in a way that somehow "doesn't apply to Republicans." 

Among countless examples refuting Antjuan's assertion: "Grab them by the p---y," hello? 

And in my home state of North Carolina, Mark Robinson's 2024 gubernatorial campaign collapsed after CNN and others dug up years-old posts in which he called himself a "Black Nazi," defended slavery in crude terms, and left explicit comments on a porn site. Those were treated as disqualifying and dominated coverage for weeks. 

Republicans get no such "it was just a hashtag activism moment" pass. Hong just confirmed her radical posts reflected her real feelings. The only remaining question: do Wisconsin Democrats notice—or care? 

Note: Compounding the utter failure of Hong's non-retraction retraction was that, in the line that followed "I let my feelings out into the world," she said: "And right now, as governor, what I'm most serious about are the issues that voters are telling me they want solutions for." 

So: she's "most" serious about pandering to what voters are telling her. The logical implication is that she's still serious, just not most serious, about the loony policies she espoused--way back in the 2020s! 

Here's the transcript. 
 

CNN This Morning 
8/11/2 
6:13 am EDT 

FRANCESCA HONG: It is the people, the voters, that give me confidence, not only to win tomorrow, but to win on November 3rd. 

CORNISH: Okay, so the polls open soon in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor. Another Democratic Socialist, Francesca Hong, looks to take down an establishment-backed candidate. Now, three candidates have dropped out of this race, including David Crowley, before he re-joined the race and got the outgoing governor's endorsement. 

Hong has spent the closing days of her campaign answering for her past views, including calls to defund the police, abolish the US Senate, and cancel Thanksgiving. So it's up to Democratic voters weighing electability versus policy. 

DEMOCRATIC VOTER 1: The Democrats didn't get their act together to try to figure out who should be a viable candidate. 

DEMOCRATIC VOTER 2: What they're calling socialist policies aren't necessarily socialist. It's working for people. 

DEMOCRATIC VOTER 3: I don't think there's anything wrong with being a Democratic socialist, but she's come on so strong, that I think she's gonna scare people. 

DEMOCRATIC VOTER 4: I think that's why you're seeing maybe somebody who maybe has some bigger ideas, some bold ideas, that might seem a little bit crazy, but it's like, hey, let's give it a shot. 

CORNISH: Let's give it a shot. Okay, so Group Chat is back. I wanted to talk about this for two reasons. Yes, Antoine, I will not say moderate Democrat. I know, or no, establishment. Establishment is now a slur in the authenticity era. But I wanna play this for you. Hong was talking about her past tweets, and here is how she responded to having to defend them now. 

HONG: So I learned then you have some hot takes, sometimes bad takes, on Twitter. And I let my feelings out into the world. 

And right now, as governor, what I'm most serious about are the issues that voters are telling me they want solutions for. 

CORNISH: So, can I ask you about this, because the 2020s were a time, and the hashtag activism was a time, and people were just like, "Defund, send!" you know, like, and it was everywhere. 

And now these same folks are trying to run for office, and all this stuff is coming back. And how do you handle it? Do you say, "Actually, I didn't believe that," or like she said, "Hey, they were just hot takes"? Like, help me understand how the progressive left is reckoning with its own legacy from the 2020s. 

MARIO PARKER: Well I think AOC, who is, arguably, the leader of the progressive left, you saw her, you saw her this week, cite one of her colleagues, Chi Ossé from New York, who said, "Woke 1 was cra-zy!" 

And I think that's what you're seeing now. You're seeing them tack back a little bit toward the middle, right? You see the president and Republicans using the progressives and this fight between centrists, not establishment, seizing on that and turning the screw ahead of the midterm. 

And you see some of the progressives saying, wait a second, maybe we, you know, you see her, I mean, Hong saying, "I don't wanna defund the police. I like Thanksgiving." 

ANTJUAN SEAWRIGHT: You know, when, when I saw that interview on Sunday, the pisstivity [?] in me rose to new levels. Because I didn't think it was funny then, I don't think it's funny now. Because we as a party took an unnecessary beating for no reason, because people wanted to have this style versus substance conversation. 

CORNISH: Or people wanted change, and they thought being more combative was the way to do it. Well, when I think back to that time and how people spoke to each other online at that time. 

SEAWRIGHT: Audie, it is the people who were searching for political relevance, searching for attention. 

And people thought that we, our homework is graded the same as Republicans. That's not the case. What you say, and what you do, can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion when it comes to Democratic candidates. That does not apply to Republicans.