Topic: Media Research Center
Since the Media Research Center is the media arm of the Trump re-election campaign, it had to spin away the obvious takeaway from President Trump's walking out of an interview with Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes": that he couldn't handle tough questions from Stahl and bailed instead of manning up. So it did its Trump-mandated duty and treated Trump's whining and wimping out as a noble act furthered by the Trump campaign releasing its own video of the interview before it aired, peddled whataboutism, and tried to make it all about Joe Biden and his son. Kyle Drennen did the Trump campaign press release:
During an interview with CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl for a segment scheduled to air on Sunday’s 60 Minutes, President Trump repeatedly called out the left-wing journalist for refusing to cover the corruption scandal swirling around Joe and Hunter Biden. In a video of the entire exchange that the President posted to Facebook on Thursday, Stahl can be heard denying that any Biden scandal even exists.
In the middle of the hostile interrogation, Trump remarked: “I wish you would interview Joe Biden like you interview me. It would be so good.”
[...]
Of course, 20 years ago, in the midst of the 2000 presidential election, Stahl and 60 Minutes had no problem pushing outrageous unverified claims against Republican presidential candidate and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush.
One wonders, if Trump didn’t post the full video of interview ahead of time, would the discussion of the Hunter Biden scandal have ever made it to air?
The next day, when the hosts of "The View" pointed out the obvious -- that Trump is a whiner who couldn't take the heat -- Kristine Marsh rushed to admonish them for not embracing the Trump-approved narrative:
The hosts of The View slammed President Trump for releasing the CBS interview he did with 60 Minutes’ correspondent Lesley Stahl yesterday, before it airs on television this Sunday, because it exposed how biased the journalist was. However, the liberal hosts claimed they saw nothing wrong with the interview and the only thing they saw wrong was how Trump behaved.
Of course the hosts completely avoided talking about the most important part, where Stahl repeatedly denied the corruption scandal surrounding Biden and his son Hunter.
Co-host Ana Navarro claimed the interview actually made Stahl look good and Trump gave her a “gift.” To leftists like Navarro, the media abdicating their responsibilities as journalists to act as left-wing hacks only affirms their credibility. She slammed Trump for acting like a “colicky baby with a persecution complex:”
[...]
While co-host Sara Haines claimed Trump doesn’t want to answer tough questions:
“He also starts the interview saying, when she says, 'are you ready for some tough questions?' He said, ‘no.’ So maybe we got what he warned us about,” she mocked. Does Haines think this hostile CBS interview or his NBC town hall or his ABC town hall were walks in the park? Meanwhile Trump's opponent literally hides in his house from the media.
That's how much of a Trump surrogate the MRC is.
