Fox News anchor Shepard Smith demolished the White House’s excuse for banning CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins from a press event yesterday. Then he called on viewers not to let politics keep them from standing on guard against the Trump administration's other attacks on the press.
In an epic 10:31 segment, Smith defended the questioning of Donald Trump that got Collins barred, explained why it’s so important for the entire press corps to stand together against White House efforts to squelch questions it doesn’t like and shredded Trump’s attacks on the press as the “enemy of the people.”
Smith closed by sounding the alarm about such behavior:
SMITH: [W]hen the president attacks journalists, we question his motivation and try to discover the underlying reason. For historically, those who regularly and as a manner of pattern attack the messenger, who degrade and belittle the purveyors of truth and work to diminish the free press, often find the facts displeasing and endeavor to keep you from knowing them. We are on guard and we hope - politics aside, for the greater good - that you are, too.
Watch it below, from the July 26, 2018 Shepard Smith Reporting.
Those are excellent points. I do feel that there is value in his openly expressed #Resistance, though.
I also note that it’s a false premise to equate the current behavior of the Pence White House with the approach of an actual presidency like the Obama White House. When President Obama was in office, Fox News made it plain that they intended to attack him at every turn, including manufacturing nonsense conspiracy theories and throwing loaded “grenade gotchas” in the place of serious questions, just as they did with the Clinton White House and with the campaign of Hillary Clinton. The Obama White House responded in 2009 to the childishness of Fox News by trying to limit them to just the opinion propaganda area they clearly wanted to occupy. Fox News then threw a tantrum and got several actual journalists to stick up for them. Over the 8 years of the Obama White House, Fox News regularly attended the White House briefings to ask puerile gotcha questions, and President Obama made himself available for laughable “interviews” with blowhards like Bill O’Reilly, as did Hillary Clinton.
With the current embarrassment of the Pence White House, we have a situation where actual news and actual journalists are openly shunned and ignored, so that Right Wing propagandists can help promote the carnage Pence is inflicting. The questions being asked of Pence and his unpleasant spokesman are real ones – about very real investigations of wrongdoing and about very real consequences of Pence’s vicious policies, such as the pain of families who have been brutally separated at the border so that Pence could bully those who wish to emigrate to this country. It’s been a regular feature of the Pence White House to not only refuse to actually answer questions, but to sneer, bully and openly lie about the issues. Only in the craziest of funhouse mirrors could anyone equate the two situations, regardless of what Right Wing blowhards want to scream every day.
Dear Karma,
Please see to it that Bill Shine loses his job at the White House. Thank you.