Compare the Media's Hard Questions for Trump to This Fawning Question for Obama
There are times when the phrase “media bias” just won’t cut it because what is happening is so egregious and so blatantly antithetical to standards of journalistic integrity that calling it bias is a profound understatement.
Even a casual observer watching the way the establishment media is treating President Donald Trump during the coronavirus pandemic can pick up on their combative tone and obvious disdain, which seeps into even the most innocuous exchanges.
This double standard was highlighted recently by a pair of tweets that juxtapose two noteworthy video clips.
The first is of Trump confronting CNN’s Jeremy Diamond this week on his fake news reporting of a statement made by the president.
The second is a video posted in one of the first tweet’s replies which shows former President Barack Obama being questioned in 2009 about his first 100 days in office by Jeff Zeleny, then of The New York Times, though he’s since moved over to CNN.
In the first clip of Trump, the CNN reporter and the president sparred about the establishment media’s spin of a previous statement from the president. The media had tried to spin those remarks to make it sound as though Trump said that if he wasn’t appreciated by state governors, he would not work with them.
“They are fake news.” pic.twitter.com/bngfhQQZkO
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 30, 2020
“Your statement and your response and your answer is a lie,” Trump told Diamond as he attempted to talk over the president.
The reporter then read aloud Trump’s original statement: “I want them to be appreciative. I don’t want them to say things that aren’t true. I want them to be appreciative. We’ve done a great job. And I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about Mike Pence, the task force, I’m talking about FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers.”
Trump said “thank you” while Diamond was mid-sentence because the reporter had inadvertently proved the president’s point.
The clip continued with Trump hammering CNN and Diamond over their persistent fake news reporting.
Contrast that with the 11-year-old clip of Zeleny asking Obama about his first 100 days in office.
The exchange went like this:
Zeleny: “Thank you, Mr. President,” he began. “During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most about serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?”
Obama: “Now let me write this down.” The room full of objective journalists erupted in laughter.
Obama hammed it up and began writing while repeating the question so that he could reply to every sycophantic, pandering, saccharine line.
Just for a second, everyone imagine what these pressers would be like if the President on that podium was a democrat….
oh wait: pic.twitter.com/sFLqmxbMnm— RAC_USA (@rac_usa) March 30, 2020
As an aside, if that question was written by a middle school student, his teacher would indeed be so proud, but this was a reporter from The New York Times, which used to be the paper of record for “all the news that’s fit to print” back when it was still a serious news organization.
After Obama milked it for all its worth, Zeleny concluded by respectfully saying, “Thank you, sir.”
During the entire Obama administration, the media fell all over themselves to stroke Obama’s ego.
Even after he left office, his administration was declared scandal-free, save for the time he wore a tan suit. (A controversy that The Washington Post was still reporting on just last year, though only so it could contrast him to Trump.)
While the media behaved more like Giuliana Rancic than Woodward and Bernstein, commenting only on the hubbub about his suit, they ignored real scandals that plagued the administration.
This viral meme from 2018 lays out all of the many scandals that the mainstream media somehow forgot about, including Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Obama’s dismissal of the Islamic State group as the Taliban’s “JV team,” and so on:
New The #ObamaSnake #ObamaGate #DeepStateGate #Treason #ReleaseTheMemo #FISAMemo #FastandFurious #Benghazi #Corruption #BenGarrison #Cartoons
more at https://t.co/BS2VmmrYUK pic.twitter.com/gUpdf2Twlw— GrrrGraphics Cartoons (@GrrrGraphics) January 29, 2018
Meanwhile, despite the media and the Democrats having crafted both the Russia and Ukraine scandals from scratch and used them as an excuse to go on a mining expedition into the president’s past, somehow Trump has come out on the other side looking clean as a whistle.
In the past, a Republican president would just grin and bear all the criticism in an attempt to rise above it, but as evidenced in the exchange with the CNN reporter, at least Trump is not taking any of this lying down.
The most frustrating part about all of this is that these reporters are professionals who have clawed their way to the top of the media food chain to get access to the president, but only use their unique position to scrutinize Republican officials while fawning over Democrats.
These are the journalists who fancy themselves free speech warriors, and yet they are seemingly blind to their own glaring bias.
It’s no wonder, then, that the media has a majority disapproval rating in recent Gallup poll. Trusting the mainstream media to accurately report anything about President Trump is like asking a new mother to comment on whether her baby is adorable — it’s really a toss-up as to who would be able to offer a more objective opinion.
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