WikiLeaks: CNN Inquired with DNC about Questions to Ask During Interviews with Cruz and Trump
A new batch of 8,000 WikiLeaks emails was released late Sunday night.
One email discusses how CNN inquired with the DNC about questions to ask during interviews with Ted Cruz and Donald Trump for Wolf Blitzer.
An email dated April 28 entitled ‘Cruz on CNN’ reads ‘CNN is looking for questions. Please send some topical/interesting ones.’
That email was sent from DNC research director Lauren Dillon to other officials and staffers.
Days before that, on April 25 she asked for questions from officials and staffers for an interview that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer would be conducting with Trump.
‘Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Trump on Tues (sic) ahead of his foreign policy address on Wed,’ Dillon wrote in the email that was entitled ‘CNN questions for Trump.’
Numerous questions were submitted by a group of DNC staffers and officials for 68-year-old Blitzer to ask the billionaire.
However, in a follow-up email, she informed the group of staffers that the Trump interview ended up being cancelled.
‘CNN said the interview was cancelled as of now but will keep the questions for the next one Good to have for others as well,’ Dillon wrote in the email.
DNC deputy communications director Christina Freundlich responded to Dillion’s email with ‘Boo’, seemingly showing that she was disappointed.
The Daily Mail also reports:
‘In a separate conversation dated on April 28, Jason Seher, a writer for Jake Tapper’s show on CNN, emailed Pablo Manriquez, a former DNC media booker thanking him for ‘facilitating Luis coming on today, and bearing with us through a meelee (sic) of GOP nonsense and cancellations and all that. Any particular points he’ll want to make? We’re gonna stay Dem focused…’
In responding, Manriquez said he would include Dillon and Christina Freundlich into the conversation to see ‘if there’s any newsworthy (opposition) Luis can drop’.
Freundlich previously worked for the Iowa Democratic Party before she caused outrage when she took a selfie smiling in front of a deadly New York City fire in March 2015. She was hired as a spokeswoman for the DNC in July 2015.
Manriquez then sent a message to several staffers and wrote, ‘Window closing on this. Need to know asap if we want to offer Jake Tapper questions to ask us.’
The Daily Mail also reports:
‘Another DNC email chain found in this huge batch of emails released by Wikileaks appears to show that Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank asked the DNC for help with research for a column he wrote about Trump in April 2016.
His column titled, ‘The Ten Plagues of Trump,’ featured a list of things the Republican presidential candidate said that he deemed as ‘outrageous.’
The email was titled ‘research request: top 10 worst Trump quotes?’ as Deputy Communications Director Eric Walker wrote, ‘Milbank doing a Passover-themed 10 plagues of Trump.’
Walker was provided with a list of things that could be used to help Milbank.
One of the ‘plagues’ listed by Milbank in his column was ‘Blood’ and focused around the quote from Trump regarding Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
‘You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,’ Trump said.
The internal DNC emails suggest that the columnist asked for a list that he possibly used to assist him in writing the column, as eight of the plagues match up with suggestions that were sent by the DNC.’
The latest email release by Wikileaks comes two days before the presidential election.
The release also follows criticism CNN faced after emails showed that DNC interim chairwoman Donna Brazile, who worked at the network as an on-air contributor, leaked questions to the Clinton campaign for a debate and a town hall event.
