The White House and the Biden Campaign are not happy with their media friends in the aftermath of the Robert Hur report and President Joe Biden’s world leader gaffes. As they tell it, the media does not do an adequate job covering all of Donald Trump’s equivalent statements. On her Friday show on MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell not only agreed, but claimed that this is what happened to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
On the matter of Biden’s various world leader gaffes, Mitchell proclaimed, "This feeds directly into a major problem that they are seeing in the polling, where 76 percent of those polled in our recent poll are concerned about his age and far fewer concerned about Donald Trump's age, who, when he's not on teleprompter, you know, we’re not addressing that, the White House would point out. The extent to which non-sequiturs and things that don't make sense and confusing Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley.”
White House correspondent Mike Memoli added, “Another flash of anger that's coming even more public today is from the Biden campaign and from the White House itself. They feel that we, frankly, in the media, do not do enough job of holding up what the former president does and says on a regular basis in the same way that we are with President Biden. They’re trying to do it through the campaign and they want to see us do it more in our coverage of the race.”
Apparently, the White House doesn’t watch much media because Mitchell just did the “but Trump” bit they demand. It is also simply not true that the media does not report on what Trump says or that they ignore his bloopers. Additionally, Donald Trump never had a special counsel write that he could never be convicted because a jury would deem him to be a well-intentioned but forgetful old man.
However, Mitchell thought the criticism was completely valid, “I can understand the basic point of fairness, especially after what happened in 2016 when there was a real argument that is exactly what happened to Hillary Clinton.”
Again, the media focused heavily on the things Trump said in 2016, but sometimes there are news stories that are so big—like Hillary’s server or the Hur report—even the liberal media can’t pretend they don’t exist and when those stories do break, Democrats have no idea how to handle themselves.
Here is a transcript for the February 9 show:
MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
2/9/2024
12:10 PM ET
ANDREA MITCHELL: This feeds directly into a major problem that they are seeing in the polling, where 76 percent of those polled in our recent poll are concerned about his age and far fewer concerned about Donald Trump's age, who, when he's not on teleprompter, you know, we’re not addressing that, the White House would point out. The extent to which non-sequiturs and things that don't make sense and confusing Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley.
MIKE MEMOLI: Another flash of anger that's coming even more public today is from the Biden campaign and from the White House itself. They feel that we, frankly, in the media, do not do enough job of holding up what the former president does and says on a regular basis in the same way that we are with President Biden. They’re trying to do it through the campaign and they want to see us do it more in our coverage of the race.
MITCHELL: I can understand the basic point of fairness, especially after what happened in 2016 when there was a real argument that is exactly what happened to Hillary Clinton.
