Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Reesarch Center's Heathering campaign against Liz Cheney as she promoted her new book continued in a Dec. 6 post by Tim Graham:
Taxpayer-funded National Public Radio was aggressively competing to be the most interview spot for Liz Cheney on Monday's Morning Edition. Anchor Leila Fadel was every bit as promotional as say, Asma Khalid was with Kamala Harris a year ago. Cheney is now in the pantheon of Democrat heroes. The headline was a typical repetition of Liz's message:
Democracy is at stake if Trump is reelected, Liz Cheney warns in her new book
Fadel surely enjoyed the idea of ripping House Republicans as spineless traitors to the Constitution:
[...]
Fadel asked small, facilitating questions to let Cheney spool out her story of the rotting of the Republicans: "What was it that stripped away that unanimity [after January 6]?" And: "What's at stake here for the country?" Then came the obligatory question about if she's a Republican, which nobody should imagine at this point, not with how the liberal media are spoon-feeding her:
As usual, Graham refused to offer any sort of fact-based rebuttal to anything Cheney said -- he just whined that she was given in platform to say it. He repeated his attack in a post the next day on a different interview:
NewsHour? Many nights, you couldn't tell the difference. Co-host Amna Nawaz interviewed Liz Cheney on Thursday, and she was just like NPR's Leila Fadel in merely facilitating all of Cheney's Republican-ripping talking points from her new book. Republican tax dollars are used to trash Republicans on "public" broadcasting.
The segment's online headline was just a PR echo: Liz Cheney’s ‘Oath and Honor’ spotlights dangers of a potential 2nd Trump presidency. Nawaz's questions were fluffy softballs:
There was no mention of the fluffy softballs Graham's boss, Brent Bozell, tossed to Ron DeSantis in a gushfest a month earlier. It's as if Graham has a double standard on the issue.
Graham did actually attempt a substantive response regarding one exchange. When Cheney pointed out that Republicans were too scared to vote for Trump's impeachment, Graham huffed in response:
Neither Nawaz nor Cheney was going to explore how there were ten House Republicans who voted for the second impeachment of Trump days before he left office. Only two of them are still in the House. Some of them left to make big book deals and draw love on PBS.
The example Graham provided of a Trump-criticizing Republican who "drew love" on PBS? Adam Kinzinger. Graham did not explain why no Republican should have voted for Trump's impeachment.
When Cheney appeared on "The View," Nicholas Fondacaro had a huge meltdown in a Jan. 10 post:
With the calendar finally reading “2024,” the realization and panic seemed to be really setting in for the liberal cast of ABC’s The View. During an interview with former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, which spanned most of the Wednesday show, moderator Whoopi Goldberg and co-host Sara Haines literally begged Cheney to launch a third party and/or run third party in order to stop former President Trump from possibly beating President Biden, if he won the GOP nomination.
After returning from a commercial break, Goldberg immediately floated the idea of Cheney finding a “smart” Democrat to start a third party with. “I have felt for a long time that there's no reason why you can't find somebody smart on the left and somebody smart on the right and put them together and make that the new party,” she opined.
Faux conservative Ana Navarro quipped that a “Cheney/Goldberg” ticket could be in the works. Goldberg shot it down, saying that running for office wasn’t for her, but pressed Cheney on the idea and claimed elections would be outlawed if Trump was elected again:
Note that Fondacaro focused solely on irrelevant third-party discussions and ignored the substance of what Cheney said, which even he conceded "spanned most of the Wednesday show." That's how desperate the MRC is to smear Cheney for not marching in lockstep with its fellow Trump-lovers.
