What a coincidence that Neil Cavuto’s lapdog interview with Governor Rick Snyder (R-MI) should occur just as Snyder’s re-election poll numbers have tightened. Also, with the final outcome quite possibly depending on voter turnout, Cavuto did his best to help Snyder get his re-election talking points out – while ignoring some important statistics that don’t make Snyder look so good.
Unfortunately for Snyder, Michigan has the third highest unemployment rate in the country. Also, as the Detroit Free Press noted, Snyder raised taxes on the non-rich and made cuts to K-12 schools to fund a business tax break. Yet, Michigan lags the nation in job recovery.
But if you only got your information from this segment, you’d think Michigan was nothing less than an economic miracle marveled at by all.
At the beginning of the interview, Cavuto played footage of Snyder’s Super Bowl commercial in which he emerges from underwater wearing a wetsuit as a banner reads, “COMEBACK KID.” Cavuto asked, “What were you doing in the water and was there any metaphor going on there?”
Snyder replied, “Absolutely. Michigan was under water. We were at the bottom of the 50 states in the last decade. We had a lost decade as opposed to just the Great Recession, and now we’re above water, and we’re coming up, we’re the comeback state.”
“So the purpose of coming out of the water was what again?” Cavuto asked. It seemed little more than a prompt to allow Snyder to reiterate and expand upon his talking points.
Snyder answered, “We were below water before, now we’re above water and climbing fast. …You want to actually have fun with this, too, in terms of saying the message. We’ve gone through some very difficult times, and it’s exciting to see optimism in our state, people looking forward to the future. We’ve got young people moving back into Michigan, coming to our state. A lot of good things are going on, and we should be proud of that.”
Cavuto played along. He added, “And you should be, you’re brave enough to go in a wet suit. If I tried that here, well that would be a YouTube event.”
Snyder told an unchallenging Cavuto, “Michigan is doing better than much of the rest of the country. Again, if you looked at personal income last year, which is a great metric to use, we were tied for number one in the Great Lake states, and we ‘re number seven in the country, and that’s after being a decade around number 50. So we’re coming back strong. We’re seeing good recovery in the automotive industry, in tourism and agriculture. Most of our fields are doing well in this state. We’re just gonna keep it up.”
Cavuto closed by saying, “Governor, a pleasure, sir. Thank you very, very much, and I commend you for the wet suit thing. It’s something I’d never do, but again, you’re a very fit guy.”
Video below, of the February 28, 2014 interview, via Fox News.
