Source: Meet The Press / NBC
It’s about time journalists everywhere implement a new rule: If you can’t interview Donald Trump without babying him with softball questions and refusing to call him out while he sits there and lies to you, then just don’t interview Donald Trump.
On Sunday, NBC aired a new episode of Meet the Press, which featured the show’s new host Kristen Welker, who replaced host Chuck Todd. The general consensus—at least from everyone who isn’t a dedicated Trump acolyte who thinks up is down, left is right, and a legal election was stolen from Trump thought non-existent election fraud—is that all Kristen did was let Trump talk over her and tell demonstrable lies with little to no pushback.
note the complete lack of pushback here from Kristen Welker when Trump claims, without a shred of evidence, that Biden directed the federal indictments against him pic.twitter.com/sR45e2esjp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 17, 2023
TRUMP TV: Kristen Welker, your show on @MeetThePress is disgraceful to media TV. It lacks credibility, sets the wrong message, and prioritizes ratings over exposing Republican corruption. Your show on @NBCNews undermines democracy. Why would President Biden share a platform with… pic.twitter.com/EYRddDjPjk
— Popular Liberal
(@PopularLiberal) September 17, 2023
"He's fired up about a lot of issues … leaning into his deal-making status" — Kristen Welker's commentary here is classic pundit "both sides" whitewashing of Trump's depravity pic.twitter.com/FG2W4dbGDZ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 15, 2023
What happened in this interview was not persuasion, it was propaganda. Using propaganda instead of persuasion is a sign of fascism. Fascism is for losers because if they had good arguments they would make them. They don't, so they do what Trump did here. What a loser.
— Jennifer Mercieca (@jenmercieca) September 17, 2023
NBC did publish a fact check on Trump’s interview, which generally showed that virtually everything that came out of Trump’s booty-hole-shaped mout was a lie from the moment he stated, “I have all the facts,” and then went on to falsely claim, once again, that the 2020 presidential race was stolen from him. But, while it’s true that trying to fact-check Trump in real-time would be like publicly cataloging every single day that the sun rises and falls, most people seem to think Welker could have done a better job of, at the ver least, pushing back on Trump’s most obvious lies.
Allowing Trump to lie on @MeetThePress and leaving “fact checking” to the website is not how we should be treating a man who launched an insurrection. It’s 2023, we should have learned this lesson over 7 years. Ratings aren’t worth our democracy
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini)
(@AdamKinzinger) September 17, 2023
For example: When Trump said regarding Democrats’ abortion policies, “You have some states that are allowed to kill the child after birth,” that was not a moment to gloss over, nor was it when he got specific and said, “You have New York state and other places that passed legislation where you’re allowed to kill the baby after birth.”
Nah, if a Republican tells you Democrats have made baby murder legal, it’s OK to tell them plainly that what they said isn’t just cap, it’s an entire sombrero. Nobody with a brain is going to accuse you of liberal media bias over that.
Another example: Trump claimed, as he has ad nauseam over the past two years, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. That lie, his “big lie,” was to be expected. There’s just no way he wasn’t going to continue that one. But then Trump said this: “If this were ever before a court, we would win so easy. There is so much evidence that the election was rigged.”
In fact, Trump brought nearly 60 lawsuits that were heard by lower court, appellate courts, state supreme courts and even the U.S. Supreme Court, and just about every one of his suits were dismissed due to lack of evidence.
So many opportunities to put Trump in his place and let him hang himself by trying to defend clear-as-day lies were missed. Sorry, that’s just deplorable journalism, and everyone involved, including Wlker, should feel ashamed.
1.
Kristen Welker didn't conduct an interview of trump.
She did a promotional fluff piece during which she repeatedly referred to him as "Mr. President" and allowed him to slam President Biden with lies and no correction or pushback.
NBC might as well consider itself part of the… pic.twitter.com/Tbpy7i8Pf6
— BrooklynDad_Defiant!
(@mmpadellan) September 17, 2023
2.
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.
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) September 17, 2023
3.
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. https://t.co/WRAIDOtgS3
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) September 15, 2023
4.
Kristen Welker deserves NO CREDIT WHATSOEVER for Trump incriminating himself. She was as soft on him as possible and did everything but give him free ice cream. It's great that Trump blew it. But that was all him. If anything, it happened in spite of Welker going so easy on him.
— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) September 19, 2023
5.
CNN fact checker Daniel Dale fact checks Trump’s “Meet the Press” interview, which is something NBC’s Kristen Welker should have been doing to Trump’s face as he was spewing his lies. (Video: CNN) pic.twitter.com/70TEbXDvrt
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) September 19, 2023
6.
Kristen Welker is a disaster. Donald Trump is senile. Meet The Press needs to be taken off the air. NBC can go to hell.
— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) September 17, 2023
7.
“If Trump wants to do nothing but talk about 2020 for an hour, then you, Mr. or Mrs. TV Talking Head, need to be prepared to go to war on that subject and demolish him, completely. And only after he has been taken apart, piece by piece, do you move on.” https://t.co/3U3xYjiSM2
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) September 18, 2023
8.
Finally watched this interview! The basic failure was a lack of preparation. The lies were entirely predictable. The only way to counteract them is to be ready to immediately pull out a key transcript or video evidence to confront the lies on the spot! https://t.co/77iCWG5BmT
— Phil Williams (@NC5PhilWilliams) September 19, 2023
9.
A thought experiment: what if Kristen Welker had stopped the tape after every Trump lie to correct it with tape or graphics? Trump says he asked for 10,000 troops to the Capitol on January 6– follow with Acting Secretary of Defense saying it never happened. 1/
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) September 19, 2023
10.
Let’s be clear, NBC’s Kristen Welker giving Agolf Twitler a platform just to lie however many times he wanted without pushback/correction wasn’t an interview, it was more dangerous propaganda for a madman to feed his cult with. The media continues to fail us deliberately.
— Ricky Davila (@TheRickyDavila) September 17, 2023
11.
NBC has their broadcast hosts and pundits doing a round robin show of support for Kristen Welker's debut on MTP. It's a major fail camp. What they have really managed to do is spread disdain across the board to personalities that most of us actually liked. This is not good!! https://t.co/PDkAEyau3v
— 𝔾𝕖𝕖-𝕄𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕠𝕨 (@poeticalcontext) September 18, 2023
12.
And Kristen Welker failed to identify any of them as false or misleading, and thus by the standards of your own tweet, should be relieved of her job https://t.co/s3hsoFX2Yn
— Keith Olbermann
(@KeithOlbermann) September 17, 2023
13.
What if a surgeon instead of stopping the spread of a disease accelerates its spread? Then, after the surgery, the surgeon gives the patient a fact sheet of all the things the surgeon could have done during the surgery.
When a journalist like Kristen Welker from NBC interviews…— Ben Meiselas (@meiselasb) September 17, 2023
14.
OMG. I just heard Kristen Welker tell viewers they can go to NBC’s website for a “fact check” of the Trump interview. It would be better if Trump was fact checked live, directly to his face during the interview. But, no, too many anchors just don’t know how to do that. Shameful.
— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) September 17, 2023
(@PopularLiberal)
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