Kristen Welker
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE
Source: Meet The Press / NBC
It’s about time journalists everywhere implement a new rule: If you can’t interview Donald Trump without babying him with softball questions and refusing to call him out while he sits there and lies to you, then just don’t interview Donald Trump.
On Sunday, NBC aired a new episode of Meet the Press, which featured the show’s new host Kristen Welker, who replaced host Chuck Todd. The general consensus—at least from everyone who isn’t a dedicated Trump acolyte who thinks up is down, left is right, and a legal election was stolen from Trump thought non-existent election fraud—is that all Kristen did was let Trump talk over her and tell demonstrable lies with little to no pushback.
NBC did publish a fact check on Trump’s interview, which generally showed that virtually everything that came out of Trump’s booty-hole-shaped mout was a lie from the moment he stated, “I have all the facts,” and then went on to falsely claim, once again, that the 2020 presidential race was stolen from him. But, while it’s true that trying to fact-check Trump in real-time would be like publicly cataloging every single day that the sun rises and falls, most people seem to think Welker could have done a better job of, at the ver least, pushing back on Trump’s most obvious lies.
For example: When Trump said regarding Democrats’ abortion policies, “You have some states that are allowed to kill the child after birth,” that was not a moment to gloss over, nor was it when he got specific and said, “You have New York state and other places that passed legislation where you’re allowed to kill the baby after birth.”
Nah, if a Republican tells you Democrats have made baby murder legal, it’s OK to tell them plainly that what they said isn’t just cap, it’s an entire sombrero. Nobody with a brain is going to accuse you of liberal media bias over that.
Another example: Trump claimed, as he has ad nauseam over the past two years, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. That lie, his “big lie,” was to be expected. There’s just no way he wasn’t going to continue that one. But then Trump said this: “If this were ever before a court, we would win so easy. There is so much evidence that the election was rigged.”
In fact, Trump brought nearly 60 lawsuits that were heard by lower court, appellate courts, state supreme courts and even the U.S. Supreme Court, and just about every one of his suits were dismissed due to lack of evidence.
So many opportunities to put Trump in his place and let him hang himself by trying to defend clear-as-day lies were missed. Sorry, that’s just deplorable journalism, and everyone involved, including Wlker, should feel ashamed.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Kristen Welker’s debut as host of NBC’s Meet The Press was marred by an interview with an erratic Donald Trump.
On Sunday (September 17th), the veteran journalist took over as the moderator of the renowned weekly news program, highlighted by her interview with the former president which was heavily promoted by NBC and its networks. But it was soon apparent that even Welker had difficulty in limiting the chaos that Trump often stokes in his sit-down interviews.
[embedded content]
A prime example of this was when she asked him about his whereabouts as the events of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021 commenced. “Tell me how you watched this all unfold,” she asked the former president. “Were you in the dining room watching TV?” Trump retorted, “I’m not going to tell you. I’ll tell people later, at an appropriate time.”
Welker followed up by asking: “What did you do when the Capitol was under attack, though?” The twice-impeached former president responded: “Did you see the statements I made in the Oval Office and just outside of the Oval Office?” Trump would then issue a flurry of indirect comments, not answering Welker’s questions and again reiterating the false claim that the 2020 presidential elections were rigged, calling his words that day a “beautiful statement”. At one point Welker broke in and asked, “That was 4 o’clock in the afternoon, three hours after the attack started. I want to know who you called on that day.”
Trump would then shunt blame to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in an attempt to blame for the rioters wreaking havoc.
Despite the disarray, Welker kept her composure and even managed to get Trump to provide a somewhat direct answer on some topics. “I don’t think you should be allowed to have abortions well into a pregnancy,” he said in response to a question she posed about Republican governments exerting strict bans on abortions. He also dismissed fears about going to jail despite four impending trials. “When you say, do I lose sleep? I sleep,” he said. “I sleep. Because I truly feel that, in the end, we’re going to win.”
Meet The Press also provided multiple fact-checks broadcast on-air during the interview and afterward. “He is the former president,” she noted to a panelist during the show, undoubtedly preparing to head off critiques of the show choosing to interview Trump. “He’s facing four indictments, as journalists just set the scene, the backdrop why there is still news value and value for the public to hear from him.”
HipHopWired Radio
Our staff has picked their favorite stations, take a listen…
-
Pages