Rachel Scott was one of the few American reporters embedded with the Russian press corps ahead of President Putin’s press conference.
Straight to Putin’s face:
"The list of your political opponents who are dead, imprisoned or jailed is long...and you have now prevented anyone who supports [Alexey Navalny] to run for office. So my question is, Mr. President: what are you so afraid of?"
Putin squirmed, rambled, and what-abouted.
“You didn’t answer my question, sir.” pressed Rachel Scott.
If all your political opponents are dead, in prison, poisoned, doesn’t that send a message you don’t want a fair political fight?”
Putin isn’t a cartoon — he’s a cold blooded killer, a murdering fascist dictator. And Rachel Scott stood up, looked him in the eye, and called him out.
We saw some really poor reporting today, and we saw some brilliant reporting.
Well done, Rachel!
If you’re not familiar with her work as ABC’s Whitehouse correspondent, and as a regular on World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and Washington Week on PBS, here’s some background from USC Annenberg:
Knowing that she would need to get on-camera experience, she volunteered to work weekends as an on-air reporter at an ABC affiliate in Connecticut. She worked Monday through Friday as a producer for GMA Digital, then commuted by train to New Haven and back every weekend. “That’s the hunger and the drive that you get from being an Annenberg grad: to constantly want to do better and learn as much as you can,” she said.
That drive earned her a position as a multiplatform reporter at the network itself, covering the 2018 midterm elections, Hurricane Irma and the tornadoes that struck Alabama in 2019. In 2020, she covered the nationwide protests against police brutality after the killing of George Floyd, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential campaign.
Before moving on to the congressional beat, Scott noted a special civic duty as a working journalist covering the presidency.
“It is remarkable for me every day that I, as a Black woman, have a press badge to report from a White House that was built by slaves,” she said. “To be in that briefing room to be able to pose questions for the American people is a responsibility that I don’t take lightly.”
Update thingy, 9:30 AM, Friday, June 18. The title was written days ago, when all the talk was about Daily Caller/Breitbart/FOX alum Kaitlan Collins yelling a lying attempt at a gotcha at President Biden’s back, and his response to her bullshit.
Since then, and rightly so, Rachel Scott’s professionalism has been recognized and celebrated, and that other person has been exposed and denounced.
Thanks for reading!