Ben Shapiro:
On Saturday, Trump press secretary Sean Spicer created a media firestorm by fibbing about sizes of inauguration crowds. After calling a press conference to claim that Trump’s inauguration had the largest audience in history, both “in person and around the globe,” Spicer tore into the media for their supposed falsehoods; Spicer specifically referenced D.C. Metro figures, fencing and magnetometer placement, and floor coverings that highlighted empty spaces on the National Mall. None of his claims were true.
NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Trump top adviser Kellyanne Conway about Spicer’s routine. “I’m curious,” he said, “why President Trump chose yesterday to send out his press secretary to essentially litigate a provable falsehood when it comes to a small and petty thing like inaugural crowd size. I guess my question to you is, Why do that?” Conway futzed about for an answer, variously misdirecting to the press’s willingness to ignore President Obama’s widespread lies, Trump’s executive actions, and a New York Times reporter’s quickly retracted tweet about a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. being removed from the Oval Office.
Todd’s question is the right one: What would drive President Trump to spend mental energy on a question as silly and meaningless as inaugural crowd size? There are dozens of excellent reasons his crowd size didn’t match Obama’s; the best reason is that the inauguration takes place in a Democratic stronghold, Washington, D.C. (Trump won 4.1 percent of the vote there.) Nonetheless, Trump chose to glom on to media coverage of crowd size. Why bother?
But Todd’s question wasn’t that of the media at large. Their question quickly turned from one of presidential focus and temperament to a far more self-centered one: Why would Trump send out his press secretary to lie to them? Why would Trump want to establish such an adversarial relationship with the press? Why would Spicer attack the media?
That personal umbrage from the media drove the coverage throughout the weekend. On CNN with Brian Stelter, former Hillary Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon called Spicer’s comments “an affront to anybody who is on our side of the wall and works in this business.” CBS’s Major Garrett complained, “I’ve never seen anything like this, where it was so intense, so harsh and passionate right off the beginning.”
This is why Trump wins every time he attacks the media: because the media are so consumed with themselves, they don’t seem to care about the public interest. When Spicer returned to the podium on Monday, he gave the first question to the New York Post rather than the Associated Press. This sent the collective media into spasms of apoplexy — how dare Spicer violate protocol this way? Why did he give questions to the Christian Broadcasting Network before CNN?
Then, finally, when the more Trump-unfriendly press did get a shot at Spicer, they made the entire crowd-size debacle into a firefight over media relations. “Before I get to a policy question, just a question about the nature of your job,” said Jon Karl of ABC News. “Is it your intention to always tell the truth from that podium, and will you pledge never to knowingly say something that is not factual?”
This is the way Team Trump wants to portray the media: as completely obsessed with their own mistreatment at Trump’s hands rather than with mistreatment of the truth and, by extension, of the American people. By dividing the media from the American people, Team Trump conquers.
On the other hand, FA over inflated all the fake scandals of Obama and now not only give give Trump a pass on his out right lies, but actually abet his blatant dishonesty.
I see where Dan Blather wants us to stand up to trumps lies Speak for yourself Dan Blather you scoundrel all the time you lie a day news media was covering up for Obama and his lies Hey even the Washington Post awarded Obama with three Pinnochios for claiming its easier to by a gun then by books or vegetables its just that the talking heads do it 24/7
@Spurwing Plover:
Poor illiterate idiot ( or perhaps an idiot portraying someone illiterate) likely doesn’t even realize he just contradicted Curt’s post.
@Ajay42302:
Give all of us an example of a ‘lie’ that was of substance. I can’t think of any.
June 1, 2018 — President Trump has made 3,251 false or misleading claims in 497 days
@Greg: It is too bad no one kept track of Obama, or maybe they couldnt, hear them over the smooching noises they were making on his behind.
@kitt, #6:
If it had been a documentable, half-a-dozen times per day issue, I’m sure someone would have, given the fact that media sources on the right absolutely detested the man. They wouldn’t have let such an opportunity to attack Obama pass them by in a million years.
The universally pro-Obama media is a myth; a fairy tale. That could have been easily demonstrated by turning on FOX News or any conservative radio talk program any day of the week, at any point during his time in office.
@Greg:
What didnt Obama lie about?
Cant read your link they want me to change my settings.