party victory still possible in this primary and what happens to the big race in november because of out? joining us now is sam hall, political columnist for the clarion ledger newspaper in jackson, mississippi. mr. hall, thank you very much for joining us. it s good to have you here. good to be here. so one of the things that s been interesting to watch with this saga is the way it has sort of unfolded slowly. little details leaking out, drips and drabs, something new every day. should we read something into that? is this being sort of professionally presented as a political op, or is it just the circumstances of the way this story has been sourced? well, that s mcdaniel s chief complaint about this. the cochran campaign has said that they learned about it the day the video was put up, which was about three weeks before they went to the police and the arrests were made. the timeline they gave is, we learned about it, we researched it, we took it to the senator, the senator talke
fire conservative website published this purported expose about senator thad cochran. quote, thad cochran s executive assistant accompanied him to 42 countries on 33 taxpayer-funded trips. well, the next day, the biggest newspaper in mississippi, the jackson clarion ledger, they wrote that senator cochran was defending his travel with that staffer as essentially normal senate travel. but three days after that report appeared in the local paper in mississippi, police in mississippi arrested a local conservative blogger and charged him with sneaking into the nursing home where senator cochran s wife has lived for the past several years. they accused that blogger of taking pictures of mrs. cochran in the nursing home without her permission. for some sort of sting video against senator cochran. the arrested blogger goes by the name, constitutional clayton. he doesn t seem like your usual political mastermind. for example, on his constitutional clayton youtube channel, you can find a clip l
lot more for democrats and the national left to take a looking at mississippi and say, you know what, we have got a harder map to defend the senate. do we want to spend a little money in mississippi. half a million dollars in mississippi goes a long way. we have cheap media markets compared to other states. i can see them getting involved to see if he can get a foothold. i still think if cochran wins, he, he wins the general. it will just be a little bit uglier perhaps. i think he is the favorite. he has the baggage that childers and others will pound on him with. sam hall of the clarion ledger newspaper in jackson, mississippi. thank you for helping us understand. the story seems to change a little bit every day. thank you for helping us. of it does. thanks. we have much more ahead. stay with us tonight.
madison with it. they investigated, made an arrest, and that s the story. so i don t know if that takes three weeks or not, but mcdaniel and his supporters really hitting hard the fact that, hey, they sandbagged this so it would come out two weeks before the election. well, is this scandal having a palpable political effect? i mean, is it advancing either candidate? is it driving up interest in the primary election, driving turnout potentially up or down? is there any way to tell how voters are responding? well, i think it s really energizing mcdaniel s base, which could be, you know, an unintended consequence of cochran s ads as as well. i ve seen more out of them. they seem more intense. and they seem more engaged than they ve been in the last few weeks. it s real personal. and they re genuinely angry at cochran and his team and they blame them for mcdaniel being called up in it.
if it s wednesday, that means it s time for another member of congress to run away from dana bash at cnn. run away, run away! here she comes. at this point, cochran is trying to avoid unforced errors, going to head-scratching extremes to avoid talking to us. we tried to catch cochran after this event, but when an aide came out and saw us, they did a bait and switch. the car they told us cochran was getting in screeched away without him, while he snuck out another door to a different car, leaving reporters like us in the dust. cnn reporter dana bash can do that to anyone, apparently. but the latest member of congress to run away from her as she chased them is republican senator thad cochran of mississippi. mr. cochran has a primary challenge next week in