When Brit Hume failed to help Tucker Carlson pile on against CNN’s Jim Acosta, Hume offered Carlson’s white supremacist fans a consolation prize: The Barack Obama version of the Fox chestnut, “blacks get special privileges.”
In case you missed it, Fox has been – surprise! – siding with Donald Trump’s campaign manager and going on the attack against Acosta for daring to ask Trump, “Didn’t you kill DACA?” during the White House Easter Egg Roll.
Carlson asked for Hume’s thoughts on the confrontation during a chat last night. But Hume departed from the company line. He said that yelling questions at presidents, though it may seem inappropriate, is “a very old tradition at the White House.” Furthermore, Hume noted that “Acosta’s question got an answer, so if the president is willing to answer the question, it’s pretty hard to argue that it shouldn’t have been asked.”
But no Fox News discussion about CNN and Trump can end on a positive note for CNN. So Hume gratuitously attacked Acosta for his bias as a beat reporter. Apparently, Hume hasn’t gotten a load of Fox’s supposedly objective correspondent Ed Henry. But I digress.
Carlson set up the race card for Hume to play. First, Carlson brought up Neil Munro, whom Carlson then supervised at The Daily Caller. Carlson mischaracterized Munro's 2012 confrontation with Obama by saying Munro “yelled out a question” and “was rude about it, honestly” but “no ruder than Jim Acosta was.”
Actually, Munro was ruder than Acosta. Munro interrupted Obama while he was making an announcement and then persisted even after Obama made it clear he did not wish to be interrupted.
Ever eager for excuses to claim that blacks have the upper hand against whites, Carlson complained that Munro was “attacked as a bigot.” Then, not-so-subtly prodding Hume to get in on the “white victimization,” Carlson said, “The standards have changed, or am I just imagining that?”
Instead of correcting the false equivalence, Hume took the race bait:
HUME: No, it’s just a double standard that we all have been witnessing for years, Tucker. I mean, President Obama enjoyed a certain protected status because he was African-American and because he was a Democrat and a liberal. Those things do not normally apply to Republicans, particularly Republicans so universally loathed among most of our nation’s news media as this president is, so he doesn’t get the same kind of treatment.
Carlson looked delighted with Hume as the segment closed.
Watch Carlson and Hume forget how their own network tirelessly racebaited Obama below, from the April 3, 2018 Tucker Carlson Tonight, via Media Matters.
Hume’s nastiness was then cheered on by AM radio hosts, particularly Rush Limbaugh, which led to more and more Right Wing press people like Hume trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame by asking a vicious “gotcha” on-air and getting in a good, solid cheap shot. Fox News is more than familiar with this approach, given that Ed Henry specialized in it throughout nearly the entire 8 years of President Obama’s two terms and throughout Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. This site has been extremely helpful in documenting Henry’s repeated attempts to “just ask a question” that was really a loaded spinball. (Henry of course had to take 4 months off in 2016 from his regular gotchas when he was himself exposed for having had an extramarital affair with a Las Vegas stripper…)
In fact, throughout President Obama’s time in office, there were repeated spectacles of Right Wingers trying to publicly attack and embarrass him. Who can forget Congressman Joe Wilson shouting “You LIE!” in the middle of a September 2009 address to Congress? And who can forget Rush Limbaugh and the harder line Right Wingers joyfully defending Wilson’s action? And if we’re going to mention Neil Munro’s shameful behavior at the Rose Garden, we must also remember that Fox News happily celebrated the heckling, with Sean Hannity bringing Munro on for a friendly rehab session where they could enjoy the moment again. And we must remember that Tucker Carlson, who was Munro’s editor at the time at the Daily Caller, defended Munro at the time, saying “This is what reporters are supposed to do.” Where Carlson finds the gall to act judgmental about actual reporters at actual news outlets is frankly beyond me, to quote President Clinton from 1993.
And let’s remember that Jim Acosta’s question came only after Trump made a series of childish remarks at the Easter Egg Roll, including a few head-scratchers such as where Trump forgot that the White House actually has a name: The White House. And Trump wanted to make sure the kids at the Egg Roll were aware that he thinks the economy is doing better than EVER before, and he wanted the kids to know that 700 million dollars was going to the military, so that the military is better funded than EVER before, etc. Meaning that Jim Acosta’s questions were more than appropriate. If Pence’s spokesman was going to make comments about how great everything is in the economy and military, and if he was going to send out so many vicious statements about getting rid of DACA and his hatred of Mexicans, then he should have been prepared to answer questions in that area. And from the videos we’ve seen, Trump had no problem answering Acosta, in that he proceeded to repeat his falsehoods about DACA and immigrants – which is why Acosta followed up with the note that it was Trump who killed the DACA program, not the Democratic Party. The Right Wing has no moral ground (or any other ground) to protest against Acosta asking questions. If they don’t want Pence’s spokesman to be called out for telling falsehoods, I’d recommend not having Trump say the falsehoods in the first place.
