MRC President David Bozell visited WMAL’s O’Connor & Company on Monday morning to discuss what the Sunday talk shows (and others) had to say about the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week. Unsurprisingly, Bozell pointed out a major blind spot in the networks: a lack of someone who aligned with Charlie Kirk from an ideological perspective:
[Utah] Gov. [Spencer] Cox made the rounds. But no, as a guest, I’m talking about why don’t they put a Charlie Kirk on the payroll? Why don’t they hire a David Bozell to be one of their analysts? Who don’t they hire a Julie Gunlock or a Patrice Onwuka to be a paid analyst?
O’Connor had teed up Bozell by noting that Republicans “are the dominant political voice in America right now” with control of Congress and the White House in addition to a slew of governors’ offices, state legislatures and even local offices.
“Every time the American people have a chance to vote, they vote for us,” O’Connor said. “And yet, when you watch the Sunday shows on the networks – ABC, NBC, CBS – I think ABC has Reince Priebus, one person on the payroll who is a pro-Trump Republican. NBC, CBS … you never hear our point of view and our perspective relayed in their roundtable discussions. They have marginalized us and put us in a ghettoized space, as if the message is that our ideas are not meant for polite conversation on these shows.”
Bozell responded by name-checking the regular suspects on these programs – none of whom even understand, let alone can explain, the conservative MAGA point of view. When they do try to “diversify” their panel, they bring on people who do not share the MAGA point of view and have no interest in explaining it to balance out the leftist attacks.
“So, to your point, Meet the Press’s Peter Baker? Lef- wing. Jeffrey Goldberg? Left-wing. Kimberly Atkins-Stohr? Left-wing. Conservative representation? Sarah Fagan,” Bozell said. “That was on Meet the Press yesterday, three to one, liberal over conservative. ABC This Week had Donna Brazile, Alex Burns versus the aforementioned Reince Priebus. And then CNN, when they have a conservative, it’s Alyssa Farah or Jonah Goldberg. I mean, give me a break. And on NBC, Stephen Hayes, Trump-hating conservative.”
This refusal to treat the other half of the country as a legitimate political voice created its own set of problems for the left. Some who gleefully cheered the death of Kirk or criticized his work found themselves out of a job as their embarrassed companies scrambled to limit the damage. Perhaps never having seen any respect given views that opposed theirs, they assumed they could be as crass about Charlie Kirk as they wanted without penalty.
One such journalist was Matthew Dowd, who was fired by MSNBC after essentially saying Kirk’s words justified his death.
“I was asked throughout that day should Matthew Dowd be fired,” Bozell said. “And once he apologized, I thought I would channel my inner Charlie. Charlie would have accepted the apology and forgiven him and moved on. I almost wish MSNBC had done the same, given Matthew Dowd an opportunity to remedy his comments on the air, on camera.”
Dowd’s apology notwithstanding, Bozell said not to expect much improvement from the media in how it handles these stories. He said the TV hosts tried not to inflame too much, aside from Martha Raddatz trying to force Cox to denounce Donald Trump. But that’s on camera.
Off camera but online, it’s a different picture, he said. “A Washington Post reporter basically saying the same thing that Matthew Dowd suggested, that Charlie had it coming,” Bozell said. “These guys are going off online but off camera to speak truth to power, as it were. They despised Charlie Kirk. They despised that he was successful. They despised that he had a following.”
Bozell also explained that Kirk had inspired his own work: “I think I can speak confidently for nearly everyone in the conservative movement.”
“I wish I had done everything Charlie did as well as Charlie did it. I wish I had started a conservative operation as well as Charlie did. I wish I could be as prolific a fundraiser as Charlie was. I wish I could debate as well as Charlie did. He had a talent stack, a skill stack that was one of a kind, and he will be sorely missed.”
