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Some Perspective on WH Contempt for the Press
Jon Gabriel wrote a thought provoking post earlier today about the schizophrenic response to President Trump’s Thursday press conference. This post, similar to the schizophrenia inducing event itself, turned into a heated debate about the president, his temperament, and his reputed contempt for the press.
While it’s undeniable that President Trump is contemptuous of the press, I would just like to provide a little perspective on what contempt for the press actually is. No, I’m not comparing our fearless leader favorably to Adolph Hitler or any other odious autocrat from history. I would just like you to view a few minutes (or as much as you can stand) of the following White House press briefing led by Jay Carney three days after the Benghazi attacks.
I’m tempted to describe this performance and what it represents, but words fail me. Please just watch a few minutes and marvel. Then we can discuss the concept of contempt for the press with a little perspective from our recent, alternative universe past.
White House Press Briefing September 14, 2012
Published in General
I noticed that too.
When you said PBR, I expected a beer can.
What will those press briefings look like if Laura Ingraham takes over?
When I see that picture of Jay Carney I think that if you looked up “smarmy” in the dictionary, his picture would be there.
All those scumbags from that administration should be beaten from Fort America.
And that’s being way, way to kind to them. They baldfaced, sat there, and lied straight to all of this and the dozen or so reporters that could be bothered to cover the slaughter of an ambassador. Barry lied. Hillary lied.
And that pair stood over the corpses of people they let be slaughtered later that day. And one of them almost became president.
We truly deserve every single thing we’re going to get. We’ve got it comin’.
This is great. Set up a news conference with the President. Let him be late. Make them watch this. Then ask any who were there what they think, what they thought at the time. Then explain the lies and show them the press’s tame willingness to accept lies all sane humans already knew to be lies.
And read the newly released transcripts from senior State Dept. people two days before the Carney briefing directly contradicting Carney’s repeated lies. Ask where the current skepticism was then.
In defense of Carney, it needs to be said that he was out there with the narrative given to him by the White House in conjunction with the State Department. He’s telling them what he has been told. That said, as the questions go on and on you can see that he’s beginning to doubt what he’s been told to say.
Of course, and the same defense could be made for Spicer.
I’m never gonna see that, ’cause I can’t make it past the first lie. Just repugnant. And the media, too.
It’s not just media malpractice (the inability or unwillingness to ask follow-ups, e.g.) — it’s immoral. It’s gotten so bad, if they told me the sky was blue, I’d have to go check for myself.
Now that their god has been dethroned, they’re a “free” press again — free to criticize the president and his administration. So there’s that for what it’s worth. Ptui.
I have read that each and every administration wants their press secretary to have a good relationship with the press by not having to knowingly lie to them. It’s a tough job, particularly on days like the one you cited. Carney knew they didn’t believe him as they pounded him with questions, and I don’t think (just my guess) that he was real happy with what he had been told to say. Obama was a grand master at a tightly measured narrative. Trump, on the other hand, seems to willingly lay it all out there and suffer the consequences with the bloodthirsty press. Spicer is too new to evaluate. A few more weeks in the hot seat will help make him more confident in his job, and now that they have a Communications Director, he might be a little smoother. As time goes on, Trump might even learn to parse his words.
-He doesn’t attack “the press.” He attacks a few media sources but gives others more time to participate in the pressers. It is arrogant for certain MSMs to assume they are the only media worthy enough to ask questions.
-The MSM has contempt for other media sources, like Christian and conservative ones. Their complaint isn’t that the media doesn’t get questions but that they don’t get the questions.
-The MSM wants to destroy Trump. I would have contempt for anyone who held that as their goal towards me. Heck, I might even be more vindictive.
-This didn’t begin with Trump. Many of us had the same contempt and are finally glad to see them getting put in their place.
@iwalton , I love the idea of this being shown to the media before a Spicer chat. The destruction of media credibilIty and the deconstruction of Obama’s lies are hopefully going to happen.
For an intelligent man, Mitt Romney is a moron.
It still could be. The various ineffectual house committee investigations, Wikileaks, and Anthony the Weiner’s briefcase contain sufficient data to support numerous charges against HRC and perhaps BHO. Were I the POTUS, I would convene a meeting of a half dozen young ambitious Republican AGs and offer a prize to the one who draws up the best indictments on the available evidence.
If Carney had any integrity he would have resigned rather than go out and lie like that.
On the other hand, he may have known Vince Foster.
I’d better duck after I say this, but I’m going to say it anyway because I’m really hoping that someone will explain it to me. I don’t understand the continuing outrage over Benghazi. Yes, the Obama Administration told a ludicrous lie to explain away the motives for a terrorist attack. But the Obama Administration told ludicrous lies to explain away every terrorist attack. Most of those lies were largely ignored. But Benghazi continues to stir anger and even fury.
Compare Benghazi to the 2009 Ft. Hood massacre. Four Americans died at Benghazi. Thirteen Americans died at Ft. Hood (30 more were injured). The lie told to explain Nidal Hasan’s motive at Ft. Hood was “workplace violence.” Unlike the lie about the video used to explain Benghazi, the “workplace violence” lie had actual consequences. The soldiers who were injured or killed at Ft. Hood were denied their purple heart medals and their benefits because of that lie. Further, the government’s opportunity to prevent the attack was much greater at Ft. Hood than at Benghazi. The Army knew who Hasan was, and knew that he was an Islamic radical as far back as 2005, but did nothing. In fact, it left Hasan in a position of significant responsibility, to avoid the accusation of Islamaphobia.
So, I don’t get it. Why are people still outraged about Benghazi, but you almost never hear anything about the Ft. Hood massacre?
I think it’s because the Benghazi lie was obviously orchestrated from the top right before an election we feel we could have won. I feel like they stole that election by creating enough smoke screen to keep the full truth from coming out by election day.
You really think the Benghazi lie was less consequential? The consequences of the Benghazi lie were everything that happened in Obama’s second term and possibly the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
If that is the explanation, then I think it is mistaken. It is my impression that the Benghazi lie did more to damage Obama’s chances for reelection than if the Administration had simply said it was a terrorist attack in the first place. Obviously I could be wrong about that. But I’m pretty sure that everyone who was open to hearing the facts knew that the video story was a lie before the election. And for those whose minds were closed the truth wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
My recollection is that the Obama Administration was able to obscure what really happened in Benghazi for long enough to maintain their narrative of foreign policy success while the clock ran out. The media’s disgraceful (sometimes active, sometimes passive) role in that success was the main purpose of the OP.
Even according to the timeline published by fake leftist news site CNN, as early as September 13 (two days after the attack) “senior administration sources” were saying “The video or 9/11 [anniversary] made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective, but this was a clearly planned military-type attack.” The administration conceded that it had been a terrorist attack on September 19. And when fake journalist Candy Crowley contradicted Romney during the October debate, she did not claim that the attack had been inspired by the video; rather, she claimed that Obama had never denied that it was a terrorist attack. (Such a lie!) It is pretty clear to me that by the time of the election everyone knew that it had been a terrorist attack, and the embarrassment to the administration was not that it had been a terrorist attack, but rather the fact that they had lied about it not being a terrorist attack.
I was slightly unclear, I’d like to clarify. When I said the administration obscured what happened in Benghazi, that includes their response to it. As you just mentioned, they lied about the lies they had already told. Fake news journalist Candy Crowley helped with that in front of a huge tv audience.
The point is that when the smoke had cleared and the coverup was no longer viable the battle lines had been drawn along partisan lines. After that the whole thing was just dismissed.. Continued…
Continued (from 52)…as a partisan witch hunt. You @larry3435 argue that the coverup hurt the Obama reelection campaign. Maybe it did, but I think abandoning the narrative of “Al Qaeda on the run” would have been more damaging among persuadable voters than obscuring what happened. The political media’s role in allowing the incident to become a purely partisan issue was unforgivable. The Obama’s did it because they knew the media would never call them out on it. Therefore, the media is deplorable and irredeemable. They have abused their constitutional rights and deserve what they get.
That’s what I was gonna say! Throughout all the Obama years, I longed for just one – preferably more than one -person to resign in protest. There were so many incidents. But then I’d remember Vince Foster and the 94 or so other bodies of inconvenient people, and I finally realized it would never happen. I would so love for Benghazi to be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted, and I want to see some perp walks.
Benghazi is more serious because the administration knowingly allowed our ambassador and other Americans to die to protect their political narrative, and there was a coverup. Stevens asked for more security in view of events happening around him. The British had vacated their embassy. It was the anniversary of 9/11. That anniversary ALONE would have been enough reason to beef up security if not to leave altogether. But despite real-time reports from people on the ground, the requests were ignored. Despite having troops within striking distance to help, the order was given to stand down.
They need to investigate to pinpoint where it all originated, even though we pretty much know. Where was Obama during this time? Why isn’t anyone asking what he knew and when he knew it?
As to your reference to Ft. Hood, I agree with you that it was reprehensible for the Army to ignore what they knew about him and do nothing. It’s another example of how PC will kill us. With Benghazi, there was an immediate real-time situation where Obama refused to render aid. Our president purposefully allowed American citizens to die for selfish political reasons and he should be exposed and held to account for it.
Yes, obviously the administration thought the truth was going to damage Obama’s reelection chances and enlisted the media to conspire in the cover-up. Benghazi is about the treasonous media, too, not just government malpractice.
It also begs the question, what the hell was our ambassador doing in the Libya at the time anyway? I suspect it was a gun-running scheme to Syrian “rebels” that had the ambassador and CIA there and there’s dirt on both sides of the aisle. Which is why I don’t think we’ll ever have the full truth.
Also, Hillary’s promise to “get that filmmaker” (which they did) to the families of the fallen as they stood over those caskets is the most openly glaring indication of moral rot I can think of from a contemporary politician. Sick.
Yes, it made me sick. And even worse, when confronted on camera about the fact that the parents of some of the fallen had gone on the news and said she’d lied to them, Hillary actually implied that the families were either lying or confused. I wanted to scream. These people are utterly ruthless and will destroy anyone who gets in their way. We dodged a bullet when Trump beat her.
So, the video of Jay Carney shows that the Obama Administration was more sophisticated in duping the press, while the Trump Administration is more directly combative. Let’s remember that at the time Carney was being questioned, the press corps did not have sufficient information to dispute his account (and, given that the events in question occurred in Libya, no way to obtain critical information). Perhaps it’s a condemnation that they lacked inside sources they could contact to determine whether they were being spun, or perhaps the Obama Administration was more effective at controlling the narrative. Perhaps they weren’t sufficiently aggressive at tracking down the truth. [Yes – we all know that the press appeared more concerned with ridiculing Romney for the 47% remark than with highlighting Obama’s “video caused the attacks” misdirection.] And, clearly, part of Obama’s short-term strategy was to keep lying as long as possible until he was re-elected, knowing that other events would occur to distract the press from digging farther into the Benghazi story. In this he was largely successful. Still, as satisfying as it may be to see Sean Spicer or President Trump calling out the media for its (largely unacknowledged) bias, it ultimately does little to serve Trump’s long-term goals, aside from firing up his committed base. Trump won’t win the battle – or the re-election in four years – if he has a fired-up base, but he has lost independents or less-committed Republican voters because they’ve concluded that he’s a bombastic, combative, lying incompetent narcissist – and that’s the message Trump is helping the media to spread. There are far more effective ways to demonstrate the press corp’s bias. One of the ways is to get one’s administration under control so that he is not constantly having to answer for unforced errors. When one is caught having made an obvious mistake, an appropriate response is not: “Well, you’re all biased and what about when Obama did x?” As much as I (and I suspect everyone here) feels righteous outrage at Carney’s blatant lying, it does us little good now. Far better that Trump’s appointees clean house in their departments and that they cooperate with Congressional investigations – and disclose the degree to which Obama stonewalled those investigations if such evidence can be found. Ultimately Trump will be best served by running a tight, competent, and successful ship and avoiding incidents that require excuses, lies, or coverups.
Pugshot (View Comment):
I agree with most of what you said in comment #58. I do, however, believe that you way underestimate the importance of energizing the base. Trump is not like Obama; he doesn’t have the media, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, Hollywood, academia, etc. on his side. All he has is his base, and we are very angry at the media for the last 8 years. We heard over and over during the campaign that voter enthusiasm will not win this election for him. Wrong!
He won, and I believe his agenda (overall) will lead to higher economic growth. If he is to get a little space to implement his agenda, he needs to go on offense against the media, which also energizes his base. The only thing the fickle, clueless independent voter knows for sure is how much money he has in his pocket. The independent voter doesn’t care how mean Trump is to the media. I just flat out disagree with you about that. It’s simple, 3-4% growth is a sure victory in 2020. There can be no argument about that.
@larry3435
There are so many Obama scandals, it is hard to keep them all in your mind at once. Ft. Hood was an atrocity deliberately covered up because Obama viewed good relations with the Muslim world as more important than honor, and viewed the people of the US as psychotic bigots who would kill all Muslims if a Muslim was blamed for an atrocity.
I wonder if Mattis will change the finding from workplace violence to terrorism?