The Partisan Press loves to heckle Trump for his treatment of journalists. But they stay strangely silent when their glory boys do it.
We’ve seen story after story hammering Trump for pushing back when activist ‘journalists’ in the White House Briefings ask setup gotcha questions designed to elicit soundbites rather than information that might actually be useful to the general public.
And when Trump pushes back, it’s always the worst sort of outrage. Even calling someone ‘fake news’ is enough to get the left’s knickers in a knot, as we have seen since the very beginning of Trump’s presidency.
But how does the Left treat journalists that don’t play along with the partisan games? Are the political cheap shots team Biden took at a (female!) journalist from the MSM some kind of an existential threat against the free press, too?
Catherine Herridge was one of the first to get her hands on a copy of the recently-declassified Flynn unmasking list. Find it here:
Biden’s name was on that list, and it had the potential of making him look shady.
There were a couple of ways they could have handled it. The could have explained away why he had every legitimate reason to have access to that information. They could have downplayed the importance of it. They could have framed it in the context of some larger narrative.
Nah. Too much work.
Instead, they defamed the woman who published it.
Gregg Jarrett reported:
Naturally, a response from the Biden campaign was expected, but this got personal. Biden’s “rapid response director” Andrew Bates, instead of acknowledging the bombshell breaking news about his boss, decided to attack Herridge. Bates tweeted, “SCOOP: Catherine Herridge is a partisan, rightwing hack who is a regular conduit for conservative media manipulation ploys because she agrees to publicize things before contacting the target to ask for comment.”
We certainly are curious about what the said “target” would comment. Perhaps Biden will give one shortly instead of ignoring the story for months such as he did with Tara Reade, or continue to have his staff declare published information is lying. Or, the best we might get is the new thing to do; attack the journalist who released the intel.
Not long after Bates tweeted the fiery attack on Herridge, it was deleted. Everyone knows once it’s on the internet, it’s permanent forever. Steve Guest caught Bates in his ‘delete’ and called him out, posting Bates’ original tweet and asked, “Andrew Bates, why’d you delete this tweet?”
Hot Air explains the juicy irony, reminding us that only “as recently as 10 days ago, Joe Biden tweeted that attacking the press is part of the ‘authoritarian playbook’ and said Trump had put us on a ‘dangerous path.’ I guess his rapid response director Andrew Bates missed that.”
Why wouldn’t he take that approach? He learned about attacking the press from sitting at the feat of the master himself. No, we don’t mean Trump.
We mean Obama.
A few years back, Breitbart put together a handy list of “11 Times Barack Obama Abused Press Freedom”
It’s hardly a partisan observation. The New York Times even points out that problem in a December 2016 Opinion piece entitled ‘If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama’
Yahoo News even reported news of Obama SPYING on a Fox News journalist all the way back in 2010. (Spying on a political enemy? Is this evidence of a pattern, forming?) And this was AFTER his officials seizing 2 months’ of phone records from an AP reporter.
Even Mrs. Obama of the ‘when they go low, we go high’ fame is not above pushing the media around if she disagrees with them.
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But go ahead, and tell us how ‘Orange Man Bad’ is an existential threat to a Free Press.
Bonus points if you can lie to us about it with a straight face.
Zucker might even give you a promotion.
