On Sunday, freshman Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and slammed the media in the wake of the controversy surrounding Steve Scalise (R-La.) and his alleged speech at a white supremacist conference in 2002.
Speaking to Wallace, Zeldin called out the “mainstream media who look for any opportunity to try to tear down Republicans to help back up the President of the United States and the Democrats in Congress.”
The GOP freshman began his remarks by condemning those in the media for inaccurately covering the Scalise story:
It was a dozen years ago and the speech was not about what some of what's been reported. The speech is about making the state government, where he was serving at the time, more efficient, to reduce wasteful spending. It's unfortunate that so many news reports don't even mention the fact that this was a dozen years ago and don't mention the fact that this was about a very specific issue to reduce wasteful spending.
Zeldin concluded his remarks by listing several fresh faces inside the GOP before slamming the media’s efforts at tearing down the GOP one final time:
There is progress that's undeniable, it will continue through the 2016 elections. And I think the media is just trying to get a head start tearing down the Republican Party.
See relevant transcript below.
Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace
January 4, 2015
CHRIS WALLACE: Congressman [Lee] Zeldin, you are now the only Jewish Republican member in the House with Eric Cantor having been defeated. Are you concerned by the reports that came out this past week about the House Majority Whip Steve Scalise that a dozen years ago he spoke to a group that was founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke?
LEE ZELDIN: Well, you know, it’s important as you just mentioned, it was a dozen years ago and the speech was not about what some of what's been reported. The speech is about making the state government, where he was serving at the time, more efficient, to reduce wasteful spending. It's unfortunate that so many news reports don't even mention the fact that this was a dozen years ago and don't mention the fact that this was about a very specific issue to reduce wasteful spending.
I think that there are many in the mainstream media who look for any opportunity to try to tear down Republicans to help back up the President of the United States and the Democrats in Congress. The fact of the matter is there's been so much progress, we saw it with the election of Mia Love, of Elise Stefanik, the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress.
WALLACE: Mia Love, an African American woman in Utah.
ZELDIN: That’s right. And Carlos Curbelo down in Florida who’s a Hispanic. And the list goes on of women and minorities elected. There is progress that's undeniable, it will continue through the 2016 elections. And I think the media is just trying to get a head start tearing down the Republican Party.
