So Kristen Welker is now the moderator of Meet the Press, and I’m sorry to say she interviewed Donald Trump for her debut. And I take it the interview was a mess. It was not live but taped and edited, and it was still a mess.
To some political observers, the new interview –where Trump talked over his questioner and received little pushback — was yet another debacle that led American Enterprise Institute scholar and Atlantic contributor Norman Ornstein to declare it was a huge error in judgment.
According to Ornstein, “Oy. Trump says the Capitol Police testified against Nancy Pelosi, and then burned all the evidence. Lie upon lie upon lie. Unchallenged by Welker. Every word out of his mouth is a lie, and he talks over any questioner. Just a colossal mistake to showcase this sociopath.”
After viewing clips from the “Meet the Press’ interview, media critic Dan Froomkin complained, “In these clips, Trump utters about 30 different lies, and there’s zero pushback from Kristen Welker, who instead calls him ‘fired up’ and ‘defiant’ – and ‘the president.’ This is, actually, worse than the CNN town hall in terms of normalizing a maniac.”
I didn’t watch, but I read some of the transcript. Basically Trump just talked over the questions. Welker did attempt to challenge him but he talked overe the challenges. He basically just bulldozed Welker and left her buried under a heap of lies.
He repeatedly refused to answer questions—directly telling Welker “I’m not going to tell you” when asked if he watched the chaos on Jan. 6 from a White House dining room—and made multiple ludicrous claims that were left largely unchallenged, or weakly so. (Democrats want to kill babies after birth! Nancy Pelosi was responsible for Jan. 6!)
NBC produced multiple post-interview fact-checks on air and online, including after each interview segment during the broadcast, but that is no replacement for an on-the-spot confrontation. Presenting an evidence-backed fact check to Trump’s face allows an audience to watch him reject truth in real time. That serves a greater purpose than roundups scattered throughout NBC’s online platforms.
I think the only way you could get him to stop spewing lies and confront the questions being asked of him is with an electric cattle prod.
In other news: This headline is from the Murdoch New York Post:
I suppose it would have to be a right-wing media outlet running that headline. Just as long as it kills her re-election to the House …
Update: This is a long read, but worth it. The article focuses on one of the lesser-known Georgia RICO conspirators, a bail bondsman named Scott G. Hall, and goes into detail how he got mixed up in the conspiracy and what he did.