Charlie Spiering from Breitbart News asked a great question today in the White House briefing, but the response from Huckabee-Sanders angered the news media and caused a lot of butthurt.
You should watch the full clip to get the entire context. It’s a little long, but the heat comes in the second half so it’s worth it:
It’s a great question by Spiering and one I wanted to highlight.
CNN obviously made a mistake in publishing a fake story and thus issued a retraction, deleted the story and fired three reporters. The target of the story, Anthony Scaramucci, as we pointed out here accepted the apology of the network and moved on. But after all of this, Trump publically attacked CNN this morning for the story. Spiering simply wants to know why CNN’s response wasn’t good enough for Trump.
And I totally agree with the question. Trump could have applauded CNN for dealing with the ‘fake news’ appropriately, but he didn’t. He trashed the network for all to see.
Sanders argues that Trump’s attack this morning comes from him being so frustrated with the network overall, and she’s probably right. But that doesn’t mean Trump shouldn’t credit the network when they do something right.
In fact that’s our take on Trump here. When he does something right we applaud him, but when he breaks his promises we criticize him and deservedly so. Can’t he find it in himself to be a bit more even handed, even if he isn’t feeling it?
If you watched the clip, Huckabee-Sanders really hit the media pretty hard in that clip and I think deservedly so. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t hypocritical in some of what she said, but she wasn’t wrong to point out the biases and obsessions of the media with Trump/Russia over legitimate news stories. She’s also not wrong to point out how every little mistake is a scandal with the media. It’s been that way all year long and it only started when Trump became president. It wasn’t anything like this with Obama.
But reporters didn’t like having their integrity impugned at a national press briefing and the one reporter argued back during the briefing.
Another reporter, who didn’t get a chance to respond, did so on Twitter:
Does this feel like America? Where the White House takes q's from conservatives, then openly trashes the news media in the briefing room.
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 27, 2017
Oh look, Jim Acosta has a sad. He didn’t like being called out.
Here’s a few responses I saw on Twitter to his tweet:
Meanwhile, one of your CNN colleagues says your network runs "bull****" conspiracy theories for ratings. https://t.co/NNNtAmtrwF
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) June 27, 2017
Replace "conservatives" with leftists and send this tweet back in time a year. https://t.co/a5rkzru7s0
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 27, 2017
Those filthy conservatives. https://t.co/qXKIGoxc9B
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) June 27, 2017
At least he sort of admits there's conservative media and liberal media. (He left out a few words, but still…) #Caring https://t.co/c57SN2V290
— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) June 27, 2017
This was just a sampling as there’s a lot more on Twitter.
Just to point out, the reporter wasn’t wrong that Trump has tweeted stories with anonymous sourcing. That’s where I was talking about the White House hypocrisy. But the scandalous obsession with everything Trump by the media this year has far outweighed the few times he’s done this.
That being said, it’d be nice if some of the daytime and evening hosts at Trump News Fox News, who get to interview the president quite often, would ask him a tough question for a change. Like, why aren’t you pushing for full Obamacare repeal like you promised?