Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, who originally raised his profile during the latter part of the George W. Bush administration, is back in Washington’s limelight basking in the glow of Donald Trump's degenerate White House. And frankly, he's the perfect guy for the job of whitewashing Trump's grossly seedy underbelly in the name of Jesus.
In a lengthy piece on his newfound White House access, Brody told the New York Times how he has managed to get preferred VIP treatment from the Trump administration.
“The media’s version of tough questions and my version of tough questions are different, based on the audience we serve,” he said. “Our audience isn’t going to want me to really ask about Russia or Stormy Daniels. They are just not going to want me to ask.”
Of course not. In the name of the so-called “values voters” who make up Brody's main audience, he's giving Trump and his Christian beard Mike Pence a pass on any truths that are just a little too much for the evangelical crowd to stomach. They'd rather digest the lies that make the selling of their souls for political gain more palatable than be faced with the rank truth.
In the meantime, Brody is soaking in the spoils of lobbing the type of softball questions that allow the occupants of the White House to swing for the political fences.
It was the morning after another breathtaking revelation about President Trump and a $130,000 payment to a pornographic film actress, and dozens of reporters crowded into the White House Rose Garden, seeking answers. When one of them shouted a question about the payment, the president simply walked away.
Standing nearby, on a ceremonial balcony overlooking the West Wing, was another reporter, David Brody, waiting for a private interview with Vice President Mike Pence.
Mr. Brody, the chief political correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network, was not there to inquire about porn stars. It was the National Day of Prayer, and Mr. Brody asked the vice president whether he was tired of defending his anti-abortion views amid “potshots” from comedians, and whether prayer was “alive and well in the White House.” He inquired whether Mr. Pence would attend the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem, which took place on Monday.
Mr. Pence smiled and answered each question. Then he invited Mr. Brody to get coffee.
“The access has been phenomenal,” Mr. Brody said later in an interview. “I’m very appreciative to God for allowing it.”
Washington can generally be divided into two different types of people: those who use access for the sake of raising their own profile, and those who use access for the sake of actually advancing a cause. Sadly, there’s far too few access-getters in Washington willing to sacrifice that access to advance a cause. But Brody, to me, is the worst of access peddlers precisely because he’s posing as a journalist while simply selling his constituency what they want to hear.
I spent several years covering the Obama White House as a constituency press reporter for the LGBTQ community and I never once did an interview that ended in a coffee klatch with the vice president. That’s partly because I wasn’t lobbing softballs at them and partly because I wasn’t telling my readers only what they wanted to hear about President Obama and his administration. In fact, the press team shut me out of an interview with Obama for almost two years until after the legislative repeal of the military’s gay ban had passed—a good news story for them.
But for evangelicals, no principle is so sacrosanct that it can’t be sacrificed for the price of a conservative Supreme Court justice or moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. A Public Religion Research Institute poll released last month showed Trump—who’s running a corruption-riddled administration by any objective standard—enjoying an all-time high 75 percent favorability rating among white evangelicals, while only 22 percent hold an unfavorable view of him. In other words, white evangelicals either don’t give a damn about Trump’s numerous moral failings as both a human being and a public servant or they’re simply hermetically sealed from reality.
Whichever the case, Brody is more than happy to oblige his readers’ obliviousness as he enjoys his view from on high of the pedestrian reporters on the ground at the White House.
