I think it fair to say, echoing Clintonian political strategist Mark Penn, that we have never seen anything like it. We have never seen the level of disrespect shown to an American president. The Democratic Party has labeled itself the Resistance, thus, the disloyal opposition and the press corps has been insulting, offensive, disrespectful, abrasive and confrontational toward the president and towards his several press secretaries.
To say that the press has upheld standards of journalistic integrity is to utter a bad joke. It has not even tried. It spins every story against Trump. It does everything in its power to malign and discredit the administration. As you know, Trump has been prone to fight back, sometimes rather inelegantly.
When it comes to press secretaries, the White House press corps has largely treated them like punching bags. It insults and offends, derides and defames them, all the while asserting that it is just doing its job. If its job is to make, not report the news, it is doing well. If its job is to report the news, it is failing spectacularly.
Apparently, these pseudo-journalists have met their match in Kayleigh McEnany.
At the close of her last briefing McEnany had the unmitigated gall to call out the assembled journalists for their manifest bias. When everything Trump does is bad and everything Obama did was good, you are dealing with bigotry. The press no longer even pretends to be objective.
So, McEnany put forth a series of questions that the press corps will never ask of an Obama spokesperson.
The Daily Caller shares the questions:
Her questions were as follows:
Why did the Obama administration use opposition research, funded by a political organization and filled with foreign dirt, to spy on members of the Trump campaign?
Why was Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn unmasked by Obama’s chief of staff, Joe Biden, Susan Rice, and others?
Why was Flynn’s identity leaked — a criminal act — to the press?
Why did the DOJ learn about the FBI’s interest in Flynn’s conversations with the Russian Amb. from a conversation with Obama in the Oval Office?
Why did James Clapper, John Brennan, Samantha Power and Susan Rice privately admit under oath that they had no evidence of collusion while saying the opposite publicly?
She ended with this:
“It’s a long weekend,” McEnany concluded. “You guys have three days to follow up on those questions and I certainly hope the next time I ask, some hands go up. Because Obama’s spokesperson should be asked those questions, because President Trump’s spokespeople certainly would be.”
With that, McEnany closed her folder and walked out of the briefing room.
You can imagine the reaction. If you can’t, you could have seen it on Fox News yesterday. Or read it in The Daily Caller.
Then Chris Wallace and Jonah Goldberg unloaded on McEnany for being very, very rude to the press corps.
Wallace was actually first to take a shot at the new press secretary, referencing a Friday briefing during which McEnany had laid out the questions she believed the press should be asking. “I have to say that if Kayleigh McEnany had told Sam Donaldson and me what questions we should ask, that would not have gone well, Jonah,” Wallace said.
“I think her behavior is indefensible and grotesque,” Goldberg replied. “I think that what she has done is — there’s this cliche in Washington that President Trump wants Roy Cohn as DOJ, as attorney general. What Donald Trump wants in a press secretary is a Twitter troll who goes on attack, doesn’t actually care about doing the job they have and instead wants to impress really an audience of one and make another part of official Washington another one of these essentially cable news and Twitter laboratory arenas.”
In point of fact, the press never showed such disrespect to any other president or to any other press secretary. The press attitude is appalling, and McEnany was entirely correct to call them out on their bigotry. For the benefit of Wallace and Goldberg, she was humiliating them, she was embarrassing them, she was holding a mirror up to their own derelictions and asking them to see themselves as much of the nation sees them: as partisan hacks who have long since abandoned journalism.
In truth, the behavior of the media has been indefensible and grotesque. What do Wallace and Goldberg propose as a suitable response?
To put it more bluntly, McEnany was showing testicular fortitude, a quality that seems to offend certain Fox News hosts and commentators. Think of how humiliating it must be to think that a mere woman has more testicular fortitude than strong, empowered male commentators.
In fact, one commentator did stand up to defend McEnany:
Josh Holmes, who previously served as chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, argued that the press actually put McEnany — and all Trump spokespeople — in a position where they were constantly being forced to defend themselves.
“The confrontational nature by which journos pose the questioning is not really to obtain much information so much as to try to back them into a corner and I think she said, ‘I’m not going to play that game,’ so yeah, it is completely different,” Holmes explained.
Wallace took one last shot as the segment ended, saying, “Let me just say, Sam Donaldson and me and the Reagan White House, we were pretty tough on the White House press secretaries and we never had our religious beliefs questioned or were lectured on what we should ask.”
It’s always nice to hear Chris Wallace babbling about irrelevant analogies. It is not about being tough or not tough. It is about being dishonest and disgraceful. That Wallace and Goldberg do not understand the difference, and that they choose to attack the press secretary, to slander and defame her, tells you everything you need to know about their own testicular fortitude.
For once a Trump press secretary chooses not to be a punching bag. For once she decides to fight back. For once she calls them out on their blatant hypocrisy and flagrant bigotry and supposedly conservative media lights trash her. Doubtless they are most offended because she’s a girl.
One is all for turning the other cheek, but what happens when you run out of cheeks. At some point you need to return fire.
12 comments:
"That Wallace and Goldberg do not understand the difference, and that they choose to attack the press secretary, to slander and defame her, tells you everything you need to know about their own testicular fortitude."
No, you have this completely wrong. They know all this. They are just fighting for their side and now it's become apparent what side that is to even more people.
Politics has truly become a blood sport with the establishment war on Trump. He found a capable fighter in this intelligent young woman to as you said: return fire.
"To say that the press has upheld standards of journalistic integrity is to utter a bad joke. It has not even tried. It spins every story against Trump. It does everything in its power to malign and discredit the administration." Not only a bad joke, but also a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE LIE.
I don't know who Chris Wallace is, but I do know that Jonah Goldberg is the
NEVEREST-TRUMPER ever, and why I despise, detest, and distrust the National Review.
Kayleigh is what we call a "STURDY WOMAN" in my area. Stands up, talks straight, takes no guff, pushes over those so-called "conservative men like they weren't even there (which they had no legs to stand upon, anyway).
Yasher koach, Dr. Schneiderman. Very well said.
if even one takes a finger out of the dike, it's lights out.
watergate seems puny by comparison,
but the shouting classes have been on repeat for years now.
To quite James Brown :"Talkin'Loud and Sayin' Nuthin'"... and people know it.
I've always been puzzled as to how a Jewish couple like Mr. & Mrs. Mike Wallace could name their son "Christopher".
Kayleigh went to an all-girls Catholic school. She ain’t going to put up with this nonsense from the press corps anymore than a Trump supporter ain’t black.
Jonah Goldberg is a proud Never Trumper. I have as much respect for him as I do Bill Kristol.
Chris Wallace will always be Mike Wallace’s kid. Not good for his confidence, so he acts out. I expect little from him. I stopped watching the Sunday shows after Tim Russert died. Hopelessly predictable.
So much for Faux News, now a ward of the Murdoch children.
The Washington press corps is a high school cabal. Little activists with pens. An assemblage of jackals. They whine when the Trump Administration cancels press briefings, and then act like this once they re-open. THAT is grotesque.
They’re not going to respond to McEnamy’s questions. They refuse. They are un-curious, imperious and unserious people. Their actual role in society is now beneath them. Such is the reality of today’s Fourth Estate.
This is the greatest political scandal in American history. And these pathetic, intransigent little critters are going to miss it. Resistance, indeed.
I have nothing but contempt for today’s CTRL-Left Big Enemedia. Trump has drawn them out. Now the citizenry must destroy whatever credibility and ratings they have left.
"Kayleigh went to an all-girls Catholic school. She ain’t going to put up with this nonsense from the press corps"
...being neither a girl nor Catholic, I'm not sure I understand the reference. Is the point that the Mean Girls Club at these schools even meaner than the MGC at public schools, and hence requires sharper verbal attack & defense skills?
Who are the conservative men who freaked out? There were none in the story.
David, My experience at college was that my female peers who attended all-girls Catholic schools were more assertive, comfortable with argument/conflict in the classroom, and well-reasoned in their argumentation. This is in comparison to their female peers, who were more reserved/hesitant. In short, the women who attended all-girls Catholic schools were more confident. They were also more serious. I could spot these women from a mile away. I don't think it was baptism by fire (the "mean girls" phenomenon), I think it was the single-sex education environment that allowed them to grow academically without boys as a distraction -- and the attendant issues with dress, posturing, etc. By the time these girls were 18, they were mature and they didn't feel the need to back down to boys/men in the classroom. I see Kayleigh McEnamy as someone who fits that profile.
IAC said:
"The Washington press corps is a high school cabal."
I believe, sir, you have just topped "Fake News" as a meme, and deserve to have your own limited print run of T-Shirts curated to commemorate the event.
Cafe Press?
Stuart?
-shoe
To be honest, both "Conservative" and "Men" should be in air quotes. These are the same sewage who gave us the Shrubs and Mittens and Lyin' Ryan and Weepy and the late Songbird McShame!
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