New ‘Meet The Press’ Host Kristen Welker Scores Interview With Criminal Insurrectionist Dirtbag Donald Trump
This show is not gonna improve, is it?
Chuck Todd has hosted his last “Meet The Press,” and his replacement, Kristen Welker, has lined up special guest villain Donald Trump for her first show on Sunday. This is an impressive start for Welker, as no one else can possibly match the number of indictments per guest.
“Meet the Press” Executive Producer David P. Belles has previously defended providing a platform for Trump’s manure peddling. He told Poynter last November, “We are in the business of covering politics. It’s not our job to pick and choose the leaders. The American people get to do that. And so our job is to make sure that the American people understand who the people in power are, what they stand for, and what they plan to do.”
Belles is also in the business of scoring ratings, and NBC’s “Meet The Press” ranks a sad third behind ABC’s “This Week” and CBS’s “Face The Nation.” If you know anything about the “glass cliff,” this shouldn’t surprise you. But let’s all pretend Welker — a Black woman — would’ve still gotten this job if the white guys who replaced Tim Russert hadn’t tanked the show first.
Trump won’t be wheeled out onto the “Meet the Press” set strapped to a gurney Hannibal Lecter-style. Instead, Welker will visit him at his Bedminster club in New Jersey on Thursday. “People will say (they’re) in love.”
This is quite the deluxe celebrity treatment for a straight-up criminal, and while Trump’s not been convicted of anything, the law of averages isn’t in his favor. He’s facing 91 charges in four criminal cases — two federal, two state — in four different jurisdictions.
It’s also not like Gayle King giving R. Kelly the business on “CBS This Morning.” No, “Meet The Press” interviews political leaders and is engaging with Trump as such. He’s currently running away with the Republican nomination, which is shameful in itself, and now Welker will give Trump air time to lie and smear his political and legal opponents. Willingly letting Trump open his mouth on your program is the journalistic equivalent of suborning perjury.
Oh, but NBC News points out that the interview will be pre-taped, so their John Henry army of fact-checkers will verify Trump’s claims before collapsing and dying from exhaustion. Still, their sacrifice will allow NBC News to put Trump’s lies in “context” and post the actual facts on its website after the interview. Of course, far fewer people will visit the website than watch the interview or the shorter clips that will circulate online. This is, of course, ridiculous and quite like a publication printing articles from a known plagiarist and liar but with a note at the end to consult the website for fact-checks.
CNN further notes that Trump “often lies at a rapid clip, and confronting him in real-time has proven to be difficult for even some of the most seasoned broadcast journalists.”
Trump is the master of the Gish gallop, but it’s only challenging for supposed journalists because they just give up and let Trump lie all over them like they’re a big, fluffy mattress. According to MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan, it’s not that hard to trip up the Gish gallop. First, you isolate the most absurd statement and dismantle it. There are admittedly so many to choose from with Trump, but just pick one and don’t budge until you’ve destroyed his nonsense. Trump won’t resist incriminating himself in any number of his alleged crimes.
Welker might surprise us, but it’s likely she won’t confront Trump too harshly. Whenever anyone tries, he usually just bails, and reporters want to maintain their access. That’s why they give this lying, seditious dung heap a platform. He’s good ratings.
But only if we watch. I suggest the hardest of passes.
[CNN]
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What makes the media so disingenuous is they pretend they're just presenting us the facts, but they're really not. It'd be like them reporting on Hitler as "a leader of a nationalist party in Germany who promises some unorthodox policies towards religious minorities and an aggressive foreign policy".
And then after Germans put the guy in power, saying "well, it was their choice, we just gave them the facts!"
Personally, I think access to Trump should be restricted to established visiting hours and supervised by a correctional officer.