A Wednesday Fox & Friends segment exposed the glaring double standard the establishment press has shown in its treatment of California Representative Devin Nunes's visit to the White House grounds, i.e., not the White House itself, to view intelligence information. Meanwhile, hundreds of visits to actual high-up White House officials and to the President himself during the Obama administration, including many by the Russian ambassador himself, as well as people who would appear to have had underhanded reasons for visiting, got little or no notice.
<<< Please support MRC's NewsBusters team with a tax-deductible contribution today. >>>
In a segment titled "Where were journos when Obama let shady characters in WH?" at Fox News's website, Steve Doocy opened the segment by showing how the Big Three networks have hyperventilated over Nunes's visit, and brought on the Daily Caller's Kaitlan Collins for comment:
Transcript (bolds are mine throughout this post):
STEVE DOOCY: Well, the mainstream media seems obsessed with House Intel Committee Chair Devin Nunes's trip to the White House last week.
(Cut to previous network news clips)
ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT REPORTER: We have reported on the evidence Congressman Devin Nunes took to the White House before he shared it with his committee.
(new clip)
NBC NIGHTLY NEWS REPORTER: The revelations that he had a secret meeting on White House grounds ...
(new clip)
CBS EVENING NEWS ANCHOR SCOTT PELLEY: Democrats and at least one Republican are demanding Devin Nunes recuse himself, because he has appeared to be coordinating with the White House.
(new clip)
ABC's WORLD NEWS TONIGHT REPORTER (interviewing Nunes): Your critics say you're just too close to the Trump administration to lead this investigation.
DEVIN NUNES: Yeah, I don't know that they've actually said that.
DOOCY [back live]: But where was the outrage when the Obama White House had controversial guests, some of them invited hundreds of times? Let's talk to the White House correspondent with the Daily Caller. Kaitlan Collins joins us from our nation's capital. Good morning to you.
KAITLAN COLLINS: Good morning.
DOOCY: Conveniently, what they leave out of that network news coverage is the fact that apparently Devin Nunes went to the White House to last week to talk to a whistleblower, because he couldn't look at whatever secret information they had compiled — the intelligence community — where he worked or else everybody would have known he was a whistleblower.
COLLINS: Exactly, and Devin Nunes has said that he went to the White House to see these documents because he could not see them on Capitol Hill.
DOOCY: Right.
COLLINS: So he had to go to the White House. We don't know what he saw, we don't know what he looked at yet. But obviously he thought it was important enough that he needed to share it with the public.
DOOCY: And of course, there's this connection and this fascination in the mainstream media of all things Russian. But what's interesting, there's a complete double standard. For instance, put up a graphic. We've got a graphic of the Russian ambassador to the United States. There he is: He visited the White House when Barack Obama was President at least 22 times, and I don't remember the outrage, Kaitlan.
COLLINS: Exactly. This is the guy who Jared Kushner is coming under fire for having met with. (Also) Jess Sessions. Mike Flynn lost his job because he met with this guy and then misled the Vice President about it. But it's worth pointing out that this guy was clearly welcome at the White House when Barack Obama was in office. Now it's worth noting that these logs are not perfect records, that if someone's on the logs, it doesn't necessarily mean they showed up to the White House. But they do show that this Russian ambassador was at the White House at least 22 times — and that's just when he was there when there was a meeting with him and 30 or so people. There were at least another dozen more times when he was there when it was like an event, or a party with a lot of diplomats. But he's on those logs as having met with Obama (himself) at least five times. So it's worth pointing out there's all this pushback for Jeff Sessions meeting with this guy when he was a Senator. But there's none for this guy showing up to the (Obama) White House a lot of times.
DOOCY: Absolutely. Meanwhile, we've got a picture of Doug Shulman. He's the IRS commissioner — targeted, accused of targeting conservative groups. He went to the White House 161 times. Of course, no coordination, according to the White House. And Bob Creamer — accused of inciting violence at Trump rallies, on the Obama White House visitors' log 342 times. And you know what Kaitlan, let's be honest. The reason there is no outrage from the mainstream media is it looks like, I mean, to a fair observer, that they are working with the Democratic Party to just simply discredit Donald Trump's presidency.
COLLINS: Yes. Doug Schulman is a guy who led an agency that literally targeted conservative groups. And Bob Creamer sent people to Donald Trump rallies in the fall and during the campaign who faked and said they were sexually assaulted. So these are people that we should also be looking at. You know, let's not point out that Sergey Kislyak was at the White House a lot. There are a lot of other questionable figures who were at the White House, welcomed to Barack Obama's White House, multiple times. And I just think it's worth pointing out.
DOOCY: And we have done just that. All right, mission accomplished. Kaitlan, thank you very much for joining us from the Daily Caller.
Doocy and Collins didn't have a chance to get to other shady Obama White House visitors whose appearances garnered little to no media attention, including several with ties to the terror-supporting Muslim Brotherhood, indicted and misogynistic rappers who have celebrated cop killings, people at the center of scandal investigations, and those involved in the New Black Panther voter-intimidation whitewash.
Events since the Fox segment appeared have demonstrated that the Big Three networks, which Doocy accused of helping Democrats in their effort to discredit Trump, at a minimum have used their manufactured obsession with Nunes as an excuse to downplay the serious nature of what has been discovered.
After explaining the Democrat-media coordination, Kimberley Strassel described the real news in her Friday Wall Street Journal column:
What Devin Nunes Knows
Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration.California Rep. Adam Schiff may not offer much by way of substance, but give him marks for political flimflam. The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee was so successful at ginning up fake outrage over his Republican counterpart that he successfully buried this week’s only real (and bombshell) news.
Mr. Schiff and fellow Democrats spent this week accusing Chairman Devin Nunes of carrying water for President Trump, undermining the committee’s Russia investigation, and hiding information. The press dutifully regurgitated the outrage, as well as Mr. Schiff’s calls for Mr. Nunes to recuse himself from the investigation into possible Russian electoral meddling.
All this engineered drama served to deep-six the important information Americans urgently deserve to know. Mr. Nunes has said he has seen proof that the Obama White House surveilled the incoming administration—on subjects that had nothing to do with Russia—and that it further unmasked (identified by name) transition officials. This goes far beyond a mere scandal. It’s a potential crime.
It's perfectly reasonable to describe the Democratic Party-establishment press coordination in this matter as a hot, steaming hypocritical pile of fake news specifically manufactured to crowd out genuine news.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
