It’s about time journalists everywhere implement a new rule: If you can’t interview Donald Trump without babying him with softball questions and refusing to call him out while he sits there and lies to you, then just don’t interview Donald Trump.
On Sunday, NBC aired a new episode of Meet the Press, which featured the show’s new host Kristen Welker, who replaced host Chuck Todd. The general consensus—at least from everyone who isn’t a dedicated Trump acolyte who thinks up is down, left is right, and a legal election was stolen from Trump thought non-existent election fraud—is that all Kristen did was let Trump talk over her and tell demonstrable lies with little to no pushback.
NBC did publish a fact check on Trump’s interview, which generally showed that virtually everything that came out of Trump’s booty-hole-shaped mout was a lie from the moment he stated, “I have all the facts,” and then went on to falsely claim, once again, that the 2020 presidential race was stolen from him. But, while it’s true that trying to fact-check Trump in real-time would be like publicly cataloging every single day that the sun rises and falls, most people seem to think Welker could have done a better job of, at the ver least, pushing back on Trump’s most obvious lies.
For example: When Trump said regarding Democrats’ abortion policies, “You have some states that are allowed to kill the child after birth,” that was not a moment to gloss over, nor was it when he got specific and said, “You have New York state and other places that passed legislation where you’re allowed to kill the baby after birth.”
Nah, if a Republican tells you Democrats have made baby murder legal, it’s OK to tell them plainly that what they said isn’t just cap, it’s an entire sombrero. Nobody with a brain is going to accuse you of liberal media bias over that.
Another example: Trump claimed, as he has ad nauseam over the past two years, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. That lie, his “big lie,” was to be expected. There’s just no way he wasn’t going to continue that one. But then Trump said this: “If this were ever before a court, we would win so easy. There is so much evidence that the election was rigged.”
In fact, Trump brought nearly 60 lawsuits that were heard by lower court, appellate courts, state supreme courts and even the U.S. Supreme Court, and just about every one of his suits were dismissed due to lack of evidence.
So many opportunities to put Trump in his place and let him hang himself by trying to defend clear-as-day lies were missed. Sorry, that’s just deplorable journalism, and everyone involved, including Wlker, should feel ashamed.
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