Bloomberg’s Jeanne Cummings Claims GOP Wants To Take Away Birth Control
Appearing on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on Thursday afternoon, Jeanne Cummings, Deputy Managing Editor for Bloomberg News, decided to attack the GOP over their supposed problem with female voters.
The Bloomberg reporter argued that the GOP has “moved the abortion debate into birth control. This is a huge step where women -- that's a threshold issue for women. That’s about birth control, controlling your life. This is being in control of your life. And they want to talk about taking that away? That's a whole different conversation than abortion.”
Cummings’ comments came in response to Andrea Mitchell playing up how “the Republicans have certainly been trying to confront the whole issue of the women's vote. Jake Sherman in Politico reporting that in their own survey, internal survey, they reported they still have a woman’s problem.”
The MSNBC host proceeded to play a clip from Thursday morning’s The Daily Rundown showing RNC chairman Reince Priebus battling with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd over the GOP’s standing with women. As NewsBusters’ Kyle Drennen documented, Todd argued that women reject GOP “crazy white guys” with “crazy theories” about contraception.
In the clip Mitchell played, Priebus explained that “the gist of the poll was 50% of the women are saying they have a negative view of the Republican Party and 40% of the women are saying they have a negative view of the Democrat Party.”
In response to the video, Cummings said she’d “rather have 60% of the women liking me rather than 50% of the women not liking me. And they have a real problem. They know it. And it goes to, they are still being hurt by remarks that were made by some of their candidates in the last cycle regarding rape. It also has to do with policy.”
Apparently to Cummings, conservatives who believe that the government should merely not pay for someone’s contraception want to ban birth control altogether. Unsurprisingly, her comments came at the end of the segment and no conservative was on set to push back at the outlandish remarks from someone who is supposed to be a journalist, not a liberal pundit.
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBC
Andrea Mitchell Reports
August 28, 2014
ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, the Republicans have certainly been trying to confront the whole issue of the women's vote. Jake Sherman in Politico reporting that in their own survey, internal survey, they reported they still have a women’s problem. Chuck Todd asked Reince Priebus about that today on The Daily Rundown.
REINCE PRIEBUS: The poll just wasn't the Republicans are stuck in the past. The gist of the poll was 50 percent of the women are saying they have a negative view of the Republican Party and 40 percent of the women are saying they have a negative view of the Democrat Party.
MITCHELL: Jeanne?
JEANNE CUMMINGS: Hey, I'd rather have 60 percent of the women liking me rather than 50 percent of the women not liking me. And they have a real problem. They know it. And it goes to, they are still being hurt by remarks that were made by some of their candidates in the last cycle regarding rape. It also has to do with policy. They have moved the abortion debate into birth control. This is a huge step where women -- that's a threshold issue for women. That’s about birth control, controlling your life. This is being in control of your life. And they want to talk about taking that away? That's a whole different conversation than abortion.
— Jeffrey Meyer is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Jeffrey Meyer on Twitter.
