Ace:
I didn’t write about MeAgain Kelly’s performance the other night. Not last night, but Wednesday night.
She made a strange claim near the beginning of her update. She claimed something like “I think some in the audience got tripped up about what the piece was about,” and then claimed, falsely (more on that in a moment), that she was not asking Alicia Machado about her own allegations (that Trump had called her “Miss Piggie” and, with a racist edge that fits oh so perfectly into Hillary’s narrative, “Miss Housekeeping.”
She said she was focusing on things he had provably said, things he was on tape saying, like telling Howard Stern “she was the worst” and she was an “eating machine.”
But Megyn Kelly had asked Alicia Machado about the “Miss Piggie” and “Miss Housekeeping” claims, despite dissembling that the segment wasn’t “about” those things. Kelly asked about both, then asked Machado if there were witnesses. Machado responded in broken English that maybe there were, people “from his office” or something like that.
MeAgain Kelly did not challenge her on this vague claim that maybe there were some people “from his office” who had witnessed him saying these things, nor did she ask who these people were. (At least, not in the edited interview; maybe she asked about it but then omitted Machado’s evasive replies, which raises another set of questions about bias.)
But as the interview as presented stood, MeAgain Kelly had asked about those claims, Machado had said there were witnesses, and then MeAgain left that claim to stand unchallenged and without any further probing about who these alleged witnesses were.
Now, why would MeAgain make this claim? Why would she claim she had not asked about the Miss Piggie and Miss Housekeeping claims when she not only had asked about them, but then did not challenge Machado or ask obvious follow-ups when Machado said there were people “from his office” who heard them?Simple. Kelly was dissembling. She was embarrassed that Anderson Cooper of all people had interrogated Machado on her very dubious credibility, asking her about her alleged role in threatening judges and driving cars away from the scene of a murder, which she did not deny but only said “I am not a saint girl.”
Kelly was embarrassed that she had treated yet another #GirlInNeedOfHerDefending with kid gloves and her Concerned Face, showing little sketpicism but plenty of Solidarity for the Sisterhood.
So what she attempted to imply was that there was no need to ask about Machado’s credibility, as Kelly was, allegedly but falsely, only asking about the statements Trump made on tape, statements whose existence does not rely whatsoever on Machado’s credibility.
Get it? You don’t have to ask about Machado’s credibility if you’re asking her about things for which independent proof exists. It doesn’t matter if I am a liar if I tell you it’s cloudy out and the National Weather Service can tell you it’s cloudy out too.
Several problems, though: 1, as I noted, Kelly did ask about these things and let Machado’s assertion that there were unnamed, vague ghosts of witnesses to them stand unchallenged, and 2, if Kelly is claiming she didn’t have to scrutinize Machado’s background and credibility because she wasn’t eliciting any information from Machado, but just inquiring into documented events, why bother having Machado on and asking her any questions at all?
It makes no sense. If Kelly just wants to talk about the Stern interview and Trump’s press conference where he talks about Machado (and defends her to a press looking to humiliate her), then why not just play those tapes and talk about it with an “analyst”?
The only reason to talk to Machado is to draw information out of Machado from her own experience and of her own testimony, and her credibility is is relevant for that stuff.
MeAgain Kelly wants to dissemble and claim she didn’t go into any of those areas (she did), and therefore there was no lawyerly reason to scrutinize Machado’s past to determine her credibility (there was and remains such a reason).
Sorry, MeAgain. No one was “tripped up” about the topic of your interview except those fools credulous enough to believe your post-ante spin about it.
When you’re eliciting a subject’s own narrative, her credibility is always relevant.
Kelly’s still so traumatized by Trump she will now just spin like a top in order to excuse her lack of journalistic scrutiny into a story cooked up for her by her galpal Hillary.