Charles Blow on Wednesday wouldn’t stand for dismissive comments from New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan, who claimed during a heated CNN discussion on “NewsNight With Abby Phillip” that the veteran journalist was just trying to create a viral “social media clip.”
Blow had asked Moynihan if she could acknowledge that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election after Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and President Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, publicly refused to.
Moynihan said she could, but added: “I know you’re trying to get a social media clip, Charles.”
Blow, a former op-ed columnist for The New York Times and political analyst for MS NOW, who founded his high school newspaper and graduated magna cum laude from Grambling State University before launching his professional career, fired back.
“I really appreciate you lecturing me about what I’m here to do,” he told Moynihan.
Blow added, “I’m here because Abby’s show invited me here, and I have been in journalism for a very long time. In fact, I came to The New York Times the year that you were born, so I would suggest that you choose a lane that is your own and stay in it.”
Then came the clincher: “And don’t lecture me, because I won’t be lectured by a child.”
Moynihan had no response, but had a lot to say earlier in the show in support of Clayton — who was grilled during his confirmation hearing Wednesday by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) about whether or not Biden was illegitimately elected in 2020 as Trump still baselessly claims.
Clayton refused to give a straight answer. He told Ossoff, “I’m not going to do this with you” and offered a tepid, “Joe Biden was certified as the president.” Phillip said Wednesday, “Lydia, that’s kind of embarrassing … If he can’t just state a fact, how can he do that other job?”
“I mean, he’d been asked, I think, three times at that point, and he did mince words,” Moynihan replied, adding: “But there’s a lot of theatrics at these kind of hearings. Jon Ossoff got his soundbite, and Republicans kind of do the same thing.”
She continued, “They love to ask, ‘What is a woman?’ And [Supreme Court Justice] Ketanji Brown Jackson couldn’t answer [during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2022]. A lot of people still can’t answer that question. So to me, it’s theatrics.”
It was then that Blow interjected to ask her about the 2020 election. Moynihan was previously confronted on “NewsNight” in December for defending racist comments from Trump at the time — and arguing that certain cultures are “not compatible” with America.
Trump is set to present new claims about the 2020 election in a primetime address Thursday.