“So many people might not know, that you were once a pretty good receiver yourself back in the day,” she gushed. Her follow-up was equally tough: “As a former receiver, which quarterback would you rather have throw to you? Tom Brady or Mahomes?”
She wondered: “When you’re at the Super Bowl party at the Obama house, do you watch the commercials? Do you care about the commercials?”
Guthrie made sure to ask about scandals, just not the Democrats’ scandals: “Have you been following Deflategate and do you have an opinion about whether the Patriots cheated?”
In 2009, NBC’s Matt Lauer saluted Obama’s victory: “Not only did you just become President, obviously that carries a certain amount of fame with it. But you have achieved a certain rock-star status outside of that.”
He also sounded like a worried brother as he asked the then-new President about how his young daughters were adjusting: “This is a huge game-changer for them as well. How they doing?...Are you there for breakfast? Do you get to read them a story at night, tuck them in bed? How’s it going?”
Viewers shouldn’t expect Baier to be rude or obnoxious when he talks with President Trump, but don’t expect him to skip the obvious hard news questions, either. That’s as it should be, of course — the real offense is when liberal journalists waste viewers’ time by tossing softballs to Democratic Presidents.
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
