“Will you accept the election results no matter what happens?”
—Kristin Welker, “Meet the Press’s” latest star in an interview of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla), demonstrating that she’s not much of an improvement over her Democratic Party operative predecessor, Chuck Todd.
“Will you accept the election results no matter what happens?” If Welker were brilliant, which she is obviously not, I would give her credit for a masterful “when did you stop beating your wife” “gotcha!” question. As it is, I’ll credit her for giving us an invaluable example of how much the mainstream media is committed to enabling an undemocratic Democratic Party.
Nobody should accept an election “no matter what happens.” I won’t, you shouldn’t, and the American public shouldn’t. If the election appears to be manipulated, corrupted, marred by unenforced voting regulations and has serious vote counting issues, then blindly accepting its results would not only be irresponsible, it would be unpatriotic and potentially fatal to constitutional government. Like so much we see, read and hear from the mainstream media, the question itself raises questions, like “Is Kristen Welker stupid, incompetent or evil?” She is obviously biased and untrustworthy.
Anyone whose answer to that question is “yes” is announcing that he or she will accept a soft coup peacefully: “Thank-you, sir, may I have another?” Anyone who answers “no” is an insurrectionist.
Fortunately, Senator Rubio is one of the smarter Senators, and instantly detected the rhetorical trap. “No matter what happens? No! If it’s an unfair election, I think it’s going to be contested by each side,” Rubio replied to Welker’s question.
So guess what happened? Most of the left-biased news media, notably NBC, misrepresented the exchange and made the story Rubio’s “insurrectionist” reply! Here is NBC, lying by omission:
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, widely seen as a potential vice presidential pick for former President Donald Trump, on Sunday refused to say whether he would accept the results of the 2024 presidential election, instead blaming Democrats for sowing doubts about the election.
The senator, appearing on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” said, “I think you’re asking the wrong person. The Democrats are the ones that have opposed every Republican victory since 2000. Every single one.”
He added, “And you have Democrats now saying they won’t certify 2024 because Trump is an insurrectionist and ineligible to hold office. So you need to ask them.”
Rubio’s refusal to say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election is notable because he did vote to certify the presidential election for then-President-elect Joe Biden. At the time, he said, “Democracy is held together by people’s confidence in the election and their willingness to abide by its results.”
When Donald Trump called the news media the “enemy of the people,” this is the kind of thing that justifies that assessment. NBC’s headline: “2024 Election Sen. Marco Rubio won’t commit to accepting 2024 election results.”
“Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” This example of blatant partisan misinformation by a major broadcast news source is why I no longer approve EA commentators who deny that U.S. journalism is partisan, biased, and corrupt.
In the same interview, Welker lied outright, insisting that NBC “absolutely” covered Hunter Biden’s laptop. NBC, like every other major news source except the New York Post and Fox News as well as the social media platforms absolutely buried the laptop story as “Russian disinformation” until after the election. What we see here is the news media re-arranging facts and reality to corner Donald Trump in future court cases and controversies over his response to the 2020 election, and remove a legitimate, indeed essential defense. If a President of the United States was convinced in good faith that a national election was corrupted and “stolen,” he would have a constitutional duty to take action to protect the integrity of the process.
Ethics Alarms 
The only reason Rubio was asked the question was to get him to walk the Insurrectionist Line so that these types of stories would appear.
Yup.
On this issue Jack. I watched the “Blue Bloods” episode you recently criticised concerning anniversary gifts. I did notive the opening scene with the commissioner reading the NY Post. probably the only remaining truth teller in th media.
Yes the anniversar gift scene was a little tasteless and somewhat out of character, but this is hard nosed NY Irish police family.
BTW, as an aside, if those were the vows Jaimie pronounced in what i assume was a Catholic ceremony. His marraige is canonically invalid
However two other issues came to the surface. First, there was the proper handling of false claim against the Survivors Fund. (BTW-Why is there still a survivors fund 24 years post facto? I object to that whole industry).
The second issue was the mishandling of the old police officer who kidnapped, threatend a lawyer, and held a judge at gunpoint.
It’s almost always a fascinating ethics show, and periodically misguided, as in that last story-line you mentioned. I was amazed at the resolution.
“a little tasteless and somewhat out of character”? It was completely tasteless and incredibly out of character! This family might be “hard nosed,” but you never hear a single curse or vulgarity at that table in 14 years, and suddenly we’re hearing hard-on jokes from the women?? I’ve asked several people who are not adverse to saying “fuck” now and then, and all of them were stunned that Selleck’s show had that joke at the Sunday dinner table.
Yes, those were the vows—they were taken right from the wedding episode. I wondered about that at the time.
Sen. Rubio gave the correct answer, but he could have turned the answer back on Ms. Welker by saying:
“Ms. Welker, I’ll answer your question with a question. Let’s say President Trump wins the 2024 election and there are hints, allegations, and outright accusations that Republicans harvested illegal ballots, processed invalid mail-in ballots, or were involved in voting-room shenanigans involving suitcases of surprise ballots or water-main breaks. Will you, Kristin Welker, as an Democratic operative, a fully-biased supporter of the Biden Administration, and a member of the anti-GOP Fifth Column in this country, accept the election results no matter what happens?”
Honestly? The cancer is too far advanced to save the television and print media. That patient is terminal.
Yeah, Rubio’s answer was only minimally sufficient. He could have done much better, but as I can state with personal experience, when an interviewer pulls stuff like that live, it’s sometimes hard to snap back the perfect response. I’m still ticked off that I didn’t slam dunk my interviewer on NPR when she double-crossed me.
So true. I thought of that answer pretty quickly, but not in front of an interviewer in a forum being replayed to a vastly larger audience. And I had some time to word-smith it so it came out just right. Sen. Rubio doesn’t have any of those that advantages…neither did you with NPR.
But Rubio does have the experience of fighting these kinds of uphill battles every day, so I kind of think he – or those helping him prepare – could expect some form of that question, and have a strong response ready.
He’s been expanding on his reply on Twitter, with tweets that are essentially, “Here’s what I should have said.”
I wonder how many people actually tune in to the Sunday morning network political talk shows these days. It has to be a relatively microscopic number. Fewer than five million?
When people like Tim Russert and David Brinkley were handling those shows, I never missed them. But I was also more trusting then—I wonder how I’d react if I saw some of the old episodes now…
Sheesh. I feel the same way about anything Murrow or Cronkite or Huntley or Brinkley, supposed titans, intoned and handed down to the masses in their primes.
Indeed, he could have answered, “So, do you mean that, if President Biden wins and there are allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia and Facebook allowed misleading or inaccurate information from Russian sources about his opponents to be posted, would I accept the results of the election?”
ICYMI, here’s a bit of unintentionally hilarious pseudo-soul-searching by the NYT
How MSNBC’s Leftward Tilt Delivers Ratings, and Complications
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/business/media/nbc-msnbc-trump-biden.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tU0.H-rp.iuXozrWo7-Cf&smid=url-share
“Leftward Tilt” – got it. MSNBC is so far left that they’re horizontal.
Hilarious. Thanks for making that article accessible to a non-NYT subscriber. So funny how these writers always assume countless facts not in evidence.
Here’s how a self proclaimed moderate classic liberal willingly parrots the left’s narrative.
It’s Only Fair If We Win
My the comment I submitted to the author of that blog in its entirety without editing out the bad grammar and missed words…..
I’m hoping, but not hopeful, that the former Mayor BikeShorts both posts your comment and a response; let us know if he does.
PWS
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