CNN Fawns Over Chelsea Clinton And Her 'Extraordinary Parents'
CNN sure loves the Clintons. After running a Hillary puff piece on Thursday, the network fawned over Chelsea on Friday morning's Starting Point.
Michaela Pereira, co-host of CNN's new morning show New Day, hyped that "Chelsea Clinton might just be the epitome of girl power." In her first CNN report, she added that Chelsea "is motivated from within. She's got these two extraordinary parents."
[Video below. Audio here.]
CNN slobbered over Chelsea's line that she has a "responsibility gene."
Pereira gushed, "I found that so fascinating. She is clearly driven."
She added, "I think it's the influence of her grandmother's legacy that
sort of allowed her to understand that she has this tremendous legacy, a tremendous name, and there's so much work that she could be doing. And she's really taking that very seriously."
Pereira talked Hillary's 2016 ambitions, as CNN has already done.
"A lot of folks are speculating, by the tweets coming from your
mother's account lately, that this could mean something for her
political future. How did you feel about going out and campaigning for
her again?" Pereira asked Chelsea.
And CNN's new host praised "extraordinary parents" Bill and Hillary on multiple occasions.
"She [Chelsea] credits her success to her mother, Hillary, for
encouraging and supporting her from a very early age," Pereira noted.
She asked Chelsea, "You talked about the benefits you've had of
having two extraordinary individuals raise you as parents. Did you feel
an unbearable pressure to surpass or even to keep pace with them?"
This isn't the first time CNN has swooned over the Clinton family. Just
last year around the 2012 Clinton Global Initiative, CNN's Wolf Blitzer
raved about Chelsea.
"I looked at her and I saw in her eyes as I was watching her, she was
very impressive. I saw the best of Bill Clinton and the best of Hillary
Clinton in Chelsea Clinton," Blitzer told Bill Clinton in an interview.
"She got the best of her mom, the best of her dad,"
Later that summer, anchor Ashleigh Banfield praised Chelsea as "just remarkably articulate, poised, successful." Banfield added that "she is a total fox."
Below is a transcript of the segment, which aired on June 14 on Starting Point at 8:34 a.m. EDT:
[8:28]
DON LEMON: Well, since her mother stepped out of the spotlight, the
only child of the Clintons has been busy making a name for herself. One
of CNNs new anchors, Michaela Pereira, sat down with Chelsea Clinton to
talk about girl power, her family, and the pressure of the Clinton name.
Take a listen.
(Video Clip)
MICHAELA PEREIRA (voice-over): Chelsea Clinton might just be the
epitome of girl power. She credits her success to her mother, Hillary,
for encouraging and supporting her from a very early age.
HILLARY CLINTON: Thank you all so much!
PEREIRA: But her own achievements are not enough. She sees girls falling behind and she's determined to change that.
CHELSEA CLINTON, daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton: We need, you
know, Hollywood to make movies and television shows about sexy female
engineers. At the fourth grade level, girls at the same, same
percentages of boys say they're interested in careers in engineering or
math or astrophysics, but by eighth grade that has dropped
precipitously.
PEREIRA: (on camera) What is happening?
CHELSEA CLINTON: And I think a few things are happening. I think that
they're not seeing role models. They're seeing boys who are astronauts.
They're seeing boys who are engineers. They're seeing boys who start
Facebook or Google and they're not seeing girls, and it's really hard to
imagine yourself as something that you don't see, particularly, when
you're a kid.
PEREIRA: (voice-over) It's not just girls here at home that Clinton is
concerned about. Her family's foundation supports 10x10, a social action
campaign that produced the film "Girl Rising."
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I will read. I will study, I will learn.
PEREIRA: Aimed at educating girls the world over.
CHELSEA CLINTON: I'm grateful that it really is a global perspective.
So, I think, so often, it's easy to think like those are problems that
exist somewhere else. When in reality, we still have lots of challenges
with girls and women, even here.
PEREIRA: (on camera) If you were to write an open letter to girls around the globe, what would you say to them?
CHELSEA CLINTON: So, I was just in Malaysia a couple weeks ago at the
Women Deliver Conference, and you know, one of the consistent themes was
that every girl wanted to have her own dream. You know, even if she
didn't know what it was, that she wanted to be able to write her own
story and write her own script.
PEREIRA: (voice-over) It's perhaps not surprising that Clinton, now
married and 33, is stepping into a more prominent public role. Her name
is now officially part of the Clinton foundation.
HILLARY CLINTON, former Secretary of State: We are officially renaming the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
CHELSEA CLINTON: I'm just so excited to continue working with my
parents. I mean, I always learned something from them, and increasingly,
I learn with them, and that's just such a privilege.
PEREIRA: Chelsea graduated from Stanford and has a Masters from
Columbia and Oxford, where she is currently pursuing a doctoral degree.
But she says she doesn't feel the pressure of her family name.
(On camera) You talked about the benefits you've had of having two
extraordinary individuals raise you as parents. Did you feel an
unbearable pressure to surpass or even to keep pace with them?
CHELSEA CLINTON: No. I think my parents did such a remarkable job which
I'm even kind of more in awe of as Mark and I think about having our
own children. I never doubted that I was the center of their lives. My
parents worked really hard to ensure that whatever could be kind of made
ordinary in my life really was ordinary. We had dinner around the
kitchen table every night when I was growing up, yes, in the governor's
mansion, but, it was still around the kitchen table.
PEREIRA: (voice-over) For a family that has been through decades of
campaigns, the Clintons are extraordinarily close. Just this week,
Chelsea gave a touching speech about her father as she presented him
with the Father of the Year award.
(On camera) He said that day, I believe, that you were his crown achievement.
CHELSEA CLINTON: I hope that I can help him feel that way every day.
PEREIRA: (voice-over) Chelsea says she feels a special calling to reach
out to girls and women, specifically. Crediting her relationships with
her mother and especially her grandmother Dorothy Rodham, who passed
away in 2011.
CHELSEA CLINTON: My grandmother was a huge part of my life a still
remains a huge part of my heart and how I think about my life and she
put a lot of positive pressure on me to do more, and I think
particularly after her passing, I felt like I did need to be doing more.
We had a responsibility gene. She said particularly the girls in our
family, and I'm proud to have her genes kind of quite literally but also
philosophically.
PEREIRA: A lot of folks are speculating, by the tweets coming from your
mother's account lately, that this could mean something for her
political future. How did you feel about going out and campaigning for
her again?
CHELSEA CLINTON: She's my mom. And I'm just unabashedly,
unapologetically biased towards her because I think she's just awesome
in every way. She exemplifies and supports and advocates for so much of
what I believe in. I will support whatever she does in the foundation or
beyond.
(End Video Clip)
LEMON: Michaela Pereira joins us now. This is your inaugural –
PEREIRA: Inaugural run on CNN.
LEMON: Couldn't you have interviewed a name or something, for your first interview?
CHRISTINE ROMANS: She said she has a responsibility gene.
PEREIRA: I found that so fascinating. She is clearly driven. I asked
her about that. I was trying to figure out what makes her tick. She is
motivated from within. She's got these two extraordinary parents. She's
shied away so much from the media, but, lately, and I think it's the
influence of her grandmother's legacy that sort of allowed her to
understand that she has this tremendous legacy, a tremendous name, and
there's so much work that she could be doing. And she's really taking
that very seriously.
LEMON: And that was just a short part of the interview that's going to run on New Day.
-- Matt Hadro is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center
