MRC president Brent Bozell appeared on the Fox Business program Varney & Co. on Tuesday to discuss the network reporters getting feisty with President Obama in Antalya, Turkey on Monday.
Fox ran video of reporters from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN challenging the president’s grip on ISIS. CNN’s Jim Acosta even recalled Obama calling ISIS a “JV team” and used the word “bastards” to sum up:
JIM ACOSTA: How is that not underestimating their capabilities and how is that contained, quiet frankly? And I think a lot of Americans have this frustration that they see that the United States has the greatest military in the world, it has the backing of nearly every other country in the world when it comes to taking on ISIS. And I guess the question is, and if you’ll forgive the language, is why can’t we take out these bastards?
Stuart Varney reminded viewers that he has “confidently predicted” to Bozell many times that there would be a turning point when the press would get stronger in challenging the president, and it happened Monday.
BOZELL: Boy, did it ever! In a way that certainly, we haven’t seen in seven years. Usually, the media have been waving pom-poms for this administration. But look I think this is what’s going on. When we had our 9/11, we watched the world rally around us. France has just had its version of 9/11, and I think the media and everyone else is looking in disbelief while the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, seemingly is disinterested, saying – “well, it’s a bad thing, but our strategy is working” – when clearly it is not, and everybody knows it’s not.
And I think what you saw from reporters was disbelief. Asking the president these questions about the strategy, and he just rambled on, not want to give a straight answer. Getting visibly more and more irritated because they had the audacity to keep coming back and asking him, “Mr. President, what are you doing?”
Bozell did not agree with Varney that this toughness would continue, but he did note CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was tough after the press conference, announcing in Paris: “He said something that was pretty incredible — according to many of the military experts here and around the world who I’ve spoken to — that our strategy is working. People do not believe that to be the case. The only strategy that’s working is the strategy that he tends to dismiss — and that’s the ground troop strategy.”
What happens next? Bozell said after Obama complains about the media being too tough, many reporters would “head for the tall grass.”
