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Meet The Sequel:
This MTP commentary was just too on-point to let it pass, without bringing it to your attention. I encourage you to click the link, and read it for yourselves, as I am already stretching the bounds of acceptable editorial use, with the following excerpts.
NBC has lost me as a regular Meet The Press viewer — if they are simply going to act as a doormat for Trump Lies. I am sure that I am not alone in that regard, if this commentary is at all representative of the fact-based segment of American society. You know, those of us still grounded in reality ...
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Welker allowed Trump to make a number of statements wholly untethered to reality on a range of critical issues without tenacious, resolute, or meaningful pushback. Trump, a rapid-fire lie machine, did his usual song and dance. He lied about the election. He lied about the insurrection that his lies had spawned. And he lied about pretty much every topic that Welker broached.
Throughout it all, Welker seemed ill-equipped to handle Trump’s trademark bravado. Lacking any noticeable fire in her belly, she at times timidly tried to set the facts straight. But Welker lacked the necessary fervor and apparent grasp of the subject material the massive platform requires to effectively counter Trump, who as The New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker later told her, is like a “bulldozer shoveling falsehoods.” Trump clearly smelled weakness in the air, taking control of the interview as he ignored Welker’s hopeless — yet constant — pleas to “stay on track” and continued flooding the zone with outrageous lies.
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Oliver Darcy goes on to observe that modern Newsrooms are at a lost on how to deal with the problem of “covering Trump” — these are not your 1990 Republicans anymore. Decorum and honest debate, based on underlying policies, are no longer rhetorical standards that are respected by the party of insurrection — least of all by their bullying, bull-shoveling leader.
Darcy concludes his analysis with sage advice for these hapless Newsrooms, floundering in this GOP-inspired age of chaos ...
When interviewing Trump, the goal cannot be to make “news” like one might attempt with a typical politician. The purpose of the interview must be to hold power to account. It must be about asserting the facts in a meaningful way and forcing Trump to confront them. He will still, of course, lie — but at least the audience might be able to see through the showmanship if the interviewer displays a firm grip on the subject matter and exerts command.
Unfortunately, few in the press who have taken on the assignment have proven capable of executing the difficult task in a compelling way. That doesn’t bode well for the news industry or, more importantly, democracy at large.
This commentary even makes the case for there being “no need to interview Trump” at all. What is there to gain after all? Trump is a known quantity — he lies like the rest of us breathe.
Unless you are prepared to counter all those tsunami of lies in real time — why bother? Why give him a national media platform in the first place, since he ignores all the interview Q&A rules?
Why lend another ounce of credibility to the most destructive and dishonest politician/showman/conman ever to trash the goals and values of our once fact-based society?
Very good questions. Newsrooms would be wise to answer them …
As one television executive put it to me, “It was a crazy way to set the tone of what ‘Meet the Press’ would be under her.”
Meet The Press: the new home of the Trump-speak — an ongoing train-wreck of compliance and deference to the perpetual Bully — afterall isn’t everyone running for the most powerful office in the land, primarily to keep themselves out of jail? We’re here to help.
Such institutional co-dependence is not a good look, nor a sound rhetorical foundation, upon which to build a Newsroom, theoretically dedicated to holding government to account.
PS. That is your Constitutional mission, by the way. That is what most citizens want from the News. Not the “greatest show on Earth” — but “just the facts, Ma’am.” Assuming that is skill-set still in residence in modern corporate/celebrity media News organizations.