Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center went into freakout mode last month when CNN's Anderson Cooper said of Trump defender (and NewsBusters columnist) Jeffrey Lord: "if he took a dump on his desk, you would defend it." But the MRC does that too -- and it just demonstrated a prime example.
Trump took a Twitteresque dump on MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, and the MRC defended it.
Its first reaction -- as to be expected from an organization that joined Rush Limbaugh in smearing Sandra Fluke as a slut and attacked women who lodged sexual harassment allegations against 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain -- was using its NewsBusters Twitter account to justify Trump's attack by sending out a series of supposedly mean things Brzezinski said about Trump:
- Recently: Mika Compares Trump on 'Decency' to Bill Clinton on Intern Sex
- Recently: Mika Brzezinski Snobbishly Declares: 'No Real Men' in White House
- Recently: Mika Brzezinski Skips Over Kathy Griffin Story, 'Gross' and 'Not Worth Doing'
- Recently: Mika Brzezinski on Trump's America: "It does feel like a developing dictatorship"
- Recently: Mika says Trump acting like a 'Five Year Old'
The MRC didn't mention that its leader, Brent Bozell, likened President Obama to a "skinny ghetto crackhead" but Obama did not respond in kind.
MRC official Tim Graham joined in the justification-fest by rudely asserting in a tweet: "Let's guess @PolitlFact won't check whether Mika had a facelift. Too rude to check."
The next day, however, the MRC had something of a change of heart -- after defending Trump's sleazy smears, it moved to attacking the fact the media covered them at all.
A June 30 post by Nicholas Fondacaro conceded that Trump "egregiously mocked" Brzezinski, then complained that the media -- once again narrowly defined as only the network evening news shows -- coveredd Trump's tweets much more than how, "in two bipartisan votes, the House passed both Kate’s Law and a measure to punish sanctuary cities."
Later that day, Kyle Drennen featured another narrow sliver of the media, the network morning shows, to complain that they "devoted a staggering 52 times the amount of coverage to the President’s social media attack than to Kate’s Law passing the House.
We'll leave it to CNN's Chris Cillizza to explain why the MRC's attack on coverage is so lame:
Here's the thing: The only reason that the networks dedicated so much coverage to the Trump tweets is because it was the President of the United States cyberbullying a female journalist based on her looks.
That's a BIG story. Particularly when First Lady Melania Trump has spoken about the dangers of cyberbullying and how she wants to work to stamp it out during her time in the White House. And when it's part of a pattern of inappropriate and sexist comments over a period of years by Donald Trump.
The MRC thought it was a BIG story too -- until it realized that the blowback Trump was getting from his nastiness was universal, meaning it was time to shift into deflect-and-distract mode.
The MRC finally realized it had to stop defending the Trump dump. No word on whether Jeffrey Lord will do the same.
