MRC president Brent Bozell appeared on the Fox Business show Varney & Co. on Wednesday morning to address how the media are trashing the Trump transition. Bozell said fasten your seat belts, it's going to get worse. Now that the campaign is over and the attempt to implement policy with the Republican majority will kick in, it's going to be "scorched earth" tactics against the new president.
ASHLEY WILLIAMS: By the way, the mainstream media continuing to attack President-elect Trump on his policies. Look at these — some of these headlines up here. Opinion, Washington Post: “Trump is handed a great economy. What happens when it goes south?” And Huffington Post: “Donald Trump and his cabinet will trade on inside information as president.” Brent Bozell, Media Research Center president, joining us now. I know you're going to laugh but I mean it has been never ending. It’s been consistent. It has been biased and I was just saying. I might be naive but I was totally unaware it was to this extent and some user outlets, I got to say, didn't realized how they were in the pockets of the Democratic Party when it came out from the Wikileaks e-mails.
BRENT BOZELL: Yeah and it’s going to get worse. It’s going to get — I mean, people need to fasten their seat belts. Look, the media were laughed at him at the start of this campaign. They took him seriously and they tried to stop them. At the end of the campaign,, it’s — it failed. Now they're doing this introspection where they’re asking themselves, what do we need to do to stop them now? Now, as you go into a Trump administration, as he starts introducing policies with new leaders, it’s going to be scorched earth.
But here's an interesting thing about the headline you showed. Go to Huffington Post about trading — on inside information. Everyone on the left is taking about fake news. Fake news, by definition, is an untrue story being promoted by the author who knows that it’s untrue. That has the title and the very first sentence — has the author saying, of course, he doesn't know that's true at all. Therefore, what you have is a classic example of fake news. So I'm waiting for President Obama and everyone else to disavow the Huffington Post.
The HuffPost headline was “Donald Trump And His Cabinet Will Trade On Inside Information As President.” But socialist writer Dean Baker ruined the headline in his first sentence: “Actually, I don’t know that Donald Trump will take advantage of the inside information he will have access to as president, but no one knows that he won’t.”
MRC director of media analysis Tim Graham also made an appearance on Fox Business later on Wednesday, on Coast to Coast with Neil Cavuto. The subject was Obama doing an interview with his old campaign manager David Axelrod for CNN, and as usual, Obama complained about Fox News being so uncooperative and making him look terrible:
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA [on 10/13/16]: Look, if I watched Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me. [SCREEN WIPE] [on 09/26/13] If you talk to somebody who said, well, I don’t know. I was watching Fox News and they said this is horrible. [SCREEN WIPE] [on 11/04/16] If I watched Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me either, right? Because you have this screen, this fun house mirror through which people are receiving information.
CONNELL McSHANE: You know, those comments actually spanning a number of years and most recently in an interview he did on Monday President Obama hit Fox again for the back lash this election year. So, we have Media Research Center's Tim Graham with us. He’s hung up on this, right? I mean, he’s been saying it basically since he took office.
TIM GRAHAM: I don't buy it. I think Obama would always vote for himself.
McSHANE: You know what? That is not a bad point, probably exactly right, no matter who was saying what or you know, so —
GRAHAM: They all say Donald Trump is this thin-skinned egotist. Well, he’s got real competition here and Obama is really used to doing interviews where he is honored and you know — like the Kennedy center honors was on last night and it was all, I think we can all agree this President was so intelligent, so dignified said Stephen Colbert. I mean, this is what he is used to, everybody polishing his apple and when somebody doesn't, he’s like, oh, it’s a fun house mirror, they don't love me.
McSHANE: Right not used to being challenged in these circumstances. I mean, I don’t know. It is interesting, always interesting to see how somebody acts when they know they will not be in a job anymore, but with this administration the way he is going out now with these comments, or even, you know, in a larger picture John Kerry's speech today talking about, you know, things the one likely never be implemented, right? I mean, it’s a new administration coming on, not sure of the point of all of this.
GRAHAM: I guess they’re trying to set the table, trying to say the things they wanted to say but couldn’t say. It probably doesn’t amount to much but it underlines for people the rhetorical equivalent of what the Clinton people did in the Bush White House where they removed keys from the keyboard and just committed vandalism. That’s sort of what this is. It’s sort of the policy equivalent of vandalism.
McSHANE: Now, even if the President had specific and he hardly ever get specific when he is talking about, quote, Fox News, and a broad brush, if there was someone in particular that he had a problem with, oh, this person didn't treat me right in this particular case or what this person said was inaccurate. I mean, if you’re the president for eight years on the other side of it, you can find media organizations you could nitpick with. So, I mean, in other words it has been happening on the other side for years and years, right?
GRAHAM: Yeah, I mean, the funny thing is the press seems to think that presidents shouldn't criticize them, but the press gets to criticize the president as much as its want. The press is constantly second-guessing Republican presidents and sometimes Democratic presidents too. So, you know, I think — whoever the president ism they should be able to call up the press. They should be able to call out errors or what they think is, you know, fake news angle and Obama can do that but he’s got so much smaller a opposition press to talk about.
