“You ought to straighten out your press because you know what? A country can never be great with a dishonest press.”
—President Trump, after expressing frustration and contempt with the questions of “Meet the Press” hostess Kristen Welker and ending the interview.
Bingo. The President is exactly right, and the nation’s Founders would have agreed with him. The United States does have a dishonest press, untrustworthy, biased, partisan and irresponsible. As the Scott Pelley debacle this week proved vividly, most of Welker’s colleagues don’t even know how biased they are. The news media has become, as another Trump quote stated, “the enemy of the people.” Its corruption is undermining democracy, and making responsible citizenship difficult if not impossible.
This is a perfect coda to the previous post. The President showed Welker no respect because she deserves no respect, and neither do her counterparts on other TV news and commentary programs. Her facial expressions were hostile. Her body language was as well. Welker’s protests that she had gone to great lengths to meet the President for the interview should not have deterred the President from leaving, and didn’t. Bravo.
My tip for Kristin: if you want a full Presidential interview, be professional and don’t set out to deliver partisan talking points.
Ethics Alarms 
The problem here is that the press does not think it is dishonest. The vast majority of reporters just think they are doing their job same as any others and the problem is the president, not them. It’s similar to The bully mentality in school, where the bullies think they are just decent people keeping those who don’t belong in line and think that the problem is the kids who don’t fit in, not them. I think they also got a little spoiled with Bush the younger, who didn’t really push back all that hard. He was an example of the bullied kid who just ignores it.
Well, as we all know ignoring it never works, and I think it was failure to push back that led to hurricane Katrina being politicized and causing his popularity to decline sharply in his second term. Iran Contra came a little too late for the press to destroy Reagan. Of course Clinton and Obama and Biden had nothing to worry about because they were part of the club. When the press wasn’t kissing their collective asses they were covering for whatever mistakes they made including covering the fact that Biden was not competent, saying that it was all Republican dirty tricks.
Of course they are hostile to Trump. As far as they are concerned he is everything they do not want in a president. He has shut the border and is now aggressively trying to empty this country of those who do not belong here for whatever reason. He has ordered the use of heavy-handed tactics, which are just not pleasant to see, even if the target deserves it. By contrast, Biden wanted to ruin the career of a border patrol agent based on the untrue allegation that he had whipped a border crosser. Trump also puts absolutely no stock in black lives matter or other movements like that which the Democratic party invited to the table. Trump has also chosen to finally pick up with Iran where we left it 49 years ago, and where the press thinks we should have left it. War is also not pretty, even when you have overwhelming force.
The biggest problem here, and the one that gets ignored all the time, is that the press is unprincipled. They will happily say that Trump lies all the time the live long day. They will also constantly accuse other Republicans of lying. But, when one of their own lies, they ignore it, then they cover for it, then they tell everyone else to move on. They aren’t interested in the truth. They are interested in making their side look truthful.
They will happily shred any Republican who steps out of line in any way. But let a Democratic president who is married get oral sex from an intern in the oval office, and suddenly you hear all about it just being between them and why are we concerned about what two consenting adults do. They aren’t interested in keeping people honest or faithful or anything. They are interested in highlighting the other side’s mistakes and hiding their own.
They will happily dig up borderline comments and statements by the other side in the attempt to embarrass the other side or destroy candidates from it. They will bury any such comment from their side or make the excuse that it was long ago. They are not concerned with calling out or exposing racism unless it comes from the wrong people.
The press isn’t even really anti-war, despite their portrayal, or maybe I should say self-portrayal as the scrappy heroes who expose and bring down the military industrial complex that wants to feed young men into a meat grinder in the name of profit. You didn’t hear word one from them when Bill Clinton got us involved in the Balkans, where we had no dog in the fight, or Haiti, which frankly has no value. You also didn’t hear a word one from them when Obama droned an American citizen or led from behind into Libya, which ultimately got Muammar Gaddafi kicked out of power and killed. Had it been the other way around, I guarantee you would be hearing about how Gaddafi was really not such a bad guy and the great things he did for his people. However, when a Republican president takes military action, suddenly it’s All about questions and all about what did the president know and when did he know it and mistreatment of prisoners and casualties and stories of families left behind and focus on failure. The press doesn’t really want the United States to lose, they just want the Republican party to lose.
I could say more, but I think you get the point. The press is made up of partisan hacks and bullies who are too used to getting their own way and think they are entitled to get their own way all the time. Unfortunately getting their own way means having one party get its own way all the time, no matter the corruption, no matter the incompetence, no matter whether they put a president in who belongs in a rest home and no matter whether they run a complete incompetent who they were probably hoping to put in for a decade.
And this is why the Democrats are glossing over Graham Platner. They don’t really care about Nazis as long the Nazis are their Nazis.
Now I’m not saying the Democrats are Nazis.
Outstanding, Steve-O…as usual. Thank you!!
How ironic is it that Welker was once again stating to President Trump that there was no evidence of the 2020 elections being rigged, while at the same time the vote counts in LA for mayor suddenly shifted in the same fashion as 2020? Apparently Spencer Pratt was comfortably in second place until late drops of vote counts from — get this — areas with high homelessness and NGO activity (NGOs that Raman supervises) suddenly favored Raman by over 40%, getting her just enough votes to take second place from Pratt. So while Welker is again pushing the narrative that there were no problems in 2020, the nation is watching the same event happen once again.
That interview was hard to get through because of how combative she was. She was dripping with sanctimony.
The Scott Pelley syndrome is alive and well, and it is definitely not good for our nation.
Since the California election has been invoked ….. those of us who are able have moved out of the state. Those remaining are culpable insofar as they repeatedly vote for far left a-holes thinking, somehow that the outcomes will be different and better. At best they are victims of election fraud but, again, tolerate it. I still have family members who will never leave the state. They just close their eyes and find ways to live with the insanity.
My fear is how many Californians are unable to connect the dots between their voting patterns and the state of their state. I’ve heard many are moving to Texas, which means taking their ideology with them and screwing up Texas.
My fear, too.