Sister Toldjah at RedState took up the sad story of Justin Baragona, rushing to the defense of CNN host Brian Stelter being mocked by Kennedy on Fox News, but couldn't seem to actually work hard enough to transcribe it for Twitter.
On Tuesday's Outnumbered, they were discussing how Stelter began his show on Sunday by comparing the "radicalization" of Trump's "Stop the Steal" and QAnon supporters to ISIS terrorists:
STELTER: This is a process, radicalization. It often comes up in coverage of terrorism. That's usually the context you hear that word. We ask, how did ISIS members become radicalized? How did the shooters in El Paso or Orlando or Las Vegas become radicalized? Well, the answer very often is the Internet. The digital land of make believe.
It's fine to be against wild, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. But Stelter suggested back in March it's a conspiracy theory that there's a liberal bias on coronavirus. And when it came to unsubstantiated claims of Trump's Russian collusion, Stelter lamely argued he's a media reporter, not a Steele-dossier reporter.
The liberal outrage was spurred when Kennedy said: "Back to Brian Stelter, I'm going to steal a line from Stephen Miller. Taters gonna tater. He might be the most unsophisticated analyst in the history of media analysis. He's not just ham-fisted, he is ham-headed."
Baragona misquoted it:
During a Fox News segment complaining about how nasty and unfair the media is to conservatives, Kennedy literally compares Brian Stelter to a potato, calls him the "most despicable" media analyst in history, and says "he's not just ham-fisted, he is ham-headed." pic.twitter.com/LnRRoJYy4C
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 22, 2020
The word "despicable" is what came up in our own closed captioning, but we try to check the transcript to what's on tape. Baragona quickly wrote it up for the tabloidish leftist site The Daily Beast.
Jeremy Barr of the Washington Post (formerly of The Hollywood Reporter) -- another member of this pro-Stelter Twitter posse -- also came rushing to the defense:
Brian Stelter doesn't need defending, but I'm surprised that Fox News leaders put up with the schoolyard bullying by its hosts. I know Sean Hannity thinks it's v funny to call him "humpty dumpty," and for Tucker Carlson to send donuts as a fat joke, but .. https://t.co/FBOEgprGmd
— Jeremy Barr (@jeremymbarr) December 22, 2020
Barr is so pro-CNN he once tried to claim Chris Cuomo was a perfectly posed centrist in an "ideological no-man's land" between Hannity and Maddow. He also went after Fox's Bret Baier.
Stelter himself applauded Baragona's supposed panache in his defense:
A+ headline: "Fox News Complains About Media Being Mean to Conservatives, Then Compares CNN Host to a Potato" https://t.co/uMrHFX5V9G
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 22, 2020
Baragona noted that Stephen "Redsteeze" Miller denied using the Tater terminology: "Okay so I watched it and in fairness I've never used 'tater' I've even discouraged using it on my podcast as commenting on his looks I think immediately detracts any argument you might have about his hackishness. Haven't used the term once."
All this obscures the obvious, that Stelter can't plead innocent to "being mean" in his unsophisticated media analysis. Stelter's show infamously hosted the "expert" who predicted Trump would end up killing more people that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
