Today, during a press conference, Donald Trump deliberately insulted the intelligence of ABC News reporter Cecilia Vega. Naturally, Trump’s Fox News cheering squad thought that was just fine.
Trump took questions from reporters as an intended victory lap for his re-negotiated NAFTA agreement. But, clearly, Trump was in a prickly mood. When he called on Vega, he sneered, “She’s shocked that I picked her. Like, in a state of shock.”
“I’m not, thank you, Mr. President,” Vega replied.
Apparently, Trump thought Vega had said, “I’m not thinking.” But even so, his response was disrespectful, dismissive and demeaning to the presidency: “That’s ok, I know you’re not thinking. You never do.”
You probably won’t be surprised to know that the Outnumbered show, which aired soon afterward, found nothing wrong with that behavior.
Cohost Melissa Francis said, incorrectly, that Vega had said “something similar to ‘I was not thinking of.’” Even if she had said that, Trump’s response was still grossly inappropriate. But instead of noting that, Francis tossed to the show’s #OneLuckyGuy guest, Trumper David Webb.
According to Webb, we should just let Trump be Trump and go along with what he wants to discuss, not what reporters want to ask: "Actually, if you look at Trump over time and who he is, the president being pretty much who he is," Webb began. "I do like the fact that he controlled - “We’re going to talk about trade first.” And people can argue about the style, but there’s a lot of substance in this deal and that’s what we should focus on.
Before turning to cohost Katie Pavlich, Francis said sympathetically that Trump was “frustrated” with being asked questions about Brett Kavanaugh because the trade deal is “enormous.” As if the confirmation of an accused sexual assaulter to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Supreme Court isn’t.
Pavlich did triple duty for Trump. First, she denied that his comment was misogynistic: “Look, I don’t think he would’ve said anything different to Jim Acosta from CNN.” Next, Pavlich suggested that Trump has been fair to reporters, as opposed to dangerously hostile – while taking her own swipe at the media for thinking that Trump's despicable behavior matters: “So if we’re going to focus on the him telling her that she wasn’t thinking about something, which I’m sure the media will, in the environment that we’re in—he treats reporters fairly. And he’s had this tone since he started out on the campaign trail with reporters. So I think that continuing to focus on it is actually huge distraction away from the news here.”
Shortly after this discussion aired, probably during the next break, Webb retweeted this attack on Vega, by Kris Paronto. You may recall that he’s the guy who, in a recent Fox & Friends appearance, expressed a desire to “reach through the screen” and “just grab … and choke” Barack Obama.
. @CeciliaVega excuse you??? No you don’t think or you wouldn’t try to hijack the President’s talk. You looked like the typical liberalist with a leftist propaganda agenda ,but failed miserably, like the rest of the #FakeNews @CNN @MSNBC @ABC @nytimes @washingtonpost @CBSNews
— Kris Paronto (@KrisParonto) October 1, 2018
Watch the lickspittles condone Trump’s debasing of his office below, from the October 1, 2018 Outnumbered, via Media Matters.