The liberal media remained in damage control mode Thursday as it sought to contain the ever-widening blast radius emerging from CNN. Bret Stephens from the New York Times arrived on the set of Morning Joe to decry the White House’s attack on the media. Stephens defended CNN by claiming that the growing scandal merely represented a “mistake.” Co-host Joe Scarborough went even further in his criticism of the President by labeling his criticism of the media as “Stalinist.”
Washington Examiner columnist, Kristen Soltis Anderson, seemingly acknowledged the overwhelming media bias against Trump initially stating, “If you're trying to make ends meet and you want to know what's happening...you can be forgiven for thinking that the media doesn't want to talk about stuff that's relevant to you.” She followed this up, however, with the complaint that the media, “only have to make a mistake once for Trump to say look, see, I told you so.”
BRET STEPHENS: He's accusing us of something else. He's accusing us of dishonesty and that's the way he operates. And that’s why I was so alarmed by the decision to CNN to cashier three reporters behind this Scaramucci report which turned out to be wrong or insufficient.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Which Scaramucci handled very well by the way.
STEPHENS: He handled it with a great deal of grace. Okay. You made a mistake. You move on. But the White House sees this as an opportunity to confirm a hypothesis for its supporters, for its followers who are not making the distinction who think that CNN is out willfully to get the President, not simply to report the news.
SCARBOROUGH: Right. And Kristen, just to be totally very clear, because I think you talked about this during the campaign along with us. Nobody is saying that what Donald Trump is doing now is right. In fact, we think it's extraordinarily dangerous. Called the media enemy of the people. It’s Stalinist. But at the same time if you look in middle America, if you -- he has a more willing audience, a more receptive audience because the media got it wrong for the entire 18 months of his campaign.
KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON: I think that's right. And I think you don't have to be someone who is hooked up to an IV drip of Rush Limbaugh these days to think that there might be something that the media could do better. That they might not love this president and that they might want to put first and foremost the things that are bad about him. And if you are a voter who may not even love this president. You may not like his tweets. You may not love that he's putting up a fake cover of himself at his golf club. But, if you're trying to make ends meet and you want to know what's going on with your health care and you want to know what's happening with immigration and you turn on the news and the stories you see are look at this ridiculous thing the President tweeted, look at this ridiculous thing he put up at his golf club, you can be forgiven for thinking that the media doesn't want to talk about stuff that's relevant to you.
They just want to make fun of the President and think that that's a dereliction of their duty. And so I think that there are a lot of voters especially on the right, but not just the right, that think that media has not done an effective job of explaining what's really happening truthfully on stories that matter to them. And that is only heightened, as Brett mentioned, that they only have to make a mistake once for Trump to say look, see, I told you so.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: So what really matters on stories that’s important to them Bret? What has this president accomplished for his base for the people who are concerned that the media’s not telling the truth? Let's spell it out? Let's see. What have we got?
STEPHENS: Look. This is just the thing. I think media would be happy to report accomplishments. I'd like to know what they are.
BRZEZINSKI: Yes, where are they?
STEPHENS: I’d like to know what they are.
Exchanges like this cause the objective thinker to question whether or not there is anything that will ever result in the media coming forward and confessing their own biases and agendas. If coverage statistics, video recordings, and even lawsuits won’t do it, will anything ever?
This biased segment of Morning Joe was brought to you by Boeing, Crowne Plaza, and Liberty Mutual Insurance.
