When Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake came to the lectern of the Republican convention Tuesday, she began by extending an effusive welcome to everyone in attendance.<\/p>\n
Well, almost everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWait a minute. I don\u2019t mean that,\u201d Lake said. \u201cI don\u2019t welcome everybody in this meeting, in this room. The guys up in the fake news, frankly-\u201d<\/p>\n
She was interrupted by cheers and applause.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrankly,\u201d Lake continued, \u201cyou guys up there in the fake news have worn out your welcome, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
More cheers. More clapping. And why not? Picking on the media at a Republican convention is like praising the current city on an arena-rock tour.<\/p>\n
The rest of Lake\u2019s speech was precisely what you\u2019d expect from Kari Lake, former local television anchor in Arizona and fervent denier of the results of both the 2020 presidential election and her own loss in Arizona\u2019s 2022 gubernatorial contest. Sentences like that one are presumably why she finds the media so frustrating: It has the tendency to point out that the false things she says are false, something that she dislikes and something that she doesn\u2019t have to deal with when talking to any of the myriad right-wing media outlets.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to underestimate the importance of this dynamic. Lake, like many Republicans, speaks primarily with supporters and sycophantic interviewers. Some of the hostility the right projects toward the media is performative, a politically valuable position. But some of it, too, stems from how jarring it is to occasionally encounter a mainstream reporter who isn\u2019t willing to be steered to certain subjects or to avoid calling out falsehoods.<\/p>\n
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) offered her own good example of this dynamic Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Greene was speaking to a reporter about Trump\u2019s selection of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) to join his ticket, offering words of praise for the pick. Then the reporter pointed out that Vance had made an insulting comment about the U.K. and immigration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d Greene replied, her voice indicating more agitation as she spoke, \u201clet\u2019s talk about the words of the Democrats and Joe Biden that have also labeled President Trump as a fascist, labeled all of us as [Nazis] and Hitler. Completely lied. Demonizing him so much so that a young man \u2014 a 20-year-old, which is hard to imagine \u2014 actually climbed onto a roof and tried to murder President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reporter asked Greene if she had evidence of her claims about Democrats and the assassination attempt. Greene cut her off.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s talk about people like you that demonize people like me,\u201d Greene said. \u201cPresident Trump \u2014 you know, I have some of the most highest amount of death threats because of people like you, because you choose to only take certain words from people, and then that\u2019s what you want to report. Shame on you.\u201d<\/p>\n
She asked a nearby aide where the reporter was from. The Times, the aide said, with the reporter noting that this was the Times of London. It\u2019s not clear Greene heard that part.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re from the Times, okay. You\u2019re ridiculous. And you\u2019re the problem in our country,\u201d she fumed to the British reporter. \u201cYou lie about people like me.\u201d<\/p>\n
(The exchange was reminiscent of an interview Greene gave to a foreign outlet in June, during which she suggested that the Australian interviewer was \u201cgetting her marching orders from the Democrat Party.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to put up with the most unreal amount of [nonsense] because of little liars like you that take your job and turn it into political activism,\u201d Greene added a bit later to the Times reporter. \u201cYour job is the press. You should report the news.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reporter pointed out that she was just asking for evidence. But Greene wasn\u2019t done.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re the cause of our country being divided. You\u2019re the cause of President Trump almost being assassinated,\u201d she claimed. \u201cYou\u2019re the cause of everything wrong in America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greene ended the interview. In a social media post sharing the exchange, she complained that there were \u201c[l]ots of FAKE NEWS reporters at the RNC this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the convention floor Monday, Donald Trump Jr. had a similar exchange with MSNBC\u2019s Jacob Soboroff.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour father as president, I think even you would say, was a divisive figure,\u201d Soboroff said to the former president\u2019s son. \u201cWhat\u2019s it going to look like in a second term?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think he was a divisive figure at all,\u201d Trump replied. \u201cThe media created divisiveness around him.\u201d He cited purported examples, like the coverage of the investigation into Russian interference. \u201cIf the media actually starts being an honest broker, talking about the things that he did, the prosperity he brought, the peace deals that he signed around the world rather than the disaster that we\u2019re living right now, I think you\u2019d do everyone in the country a big favor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soboroff, who has repeatedly covered the Trump administration policy of separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, asked if such a policy would resume in a second Trump administration. Trump tried to suggest that President Barack Obama originated the policy, which isn\u2019t true and which Soboroff rebuffed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill there be a second family separation policy?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
Trump was visibly irritated.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s MSDNC so I expect nothing less from you clowns,\u201d he replied, using a pejorative nickname for the network. \u201cEven today. Even 48 hours later, you couldn\u2019t wait, you couldn\u2019t wait with your lies and your nonsense. So \u2014 get out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n
That \u201ceven today\u201d line was an apparent reference to the proximity of the Saturday attempt on Donald Trump\u2019s life, the one Greene blamed on the Times of London and other media.<\/p>\n
In each case, we see how Trump loyalists view the media: Their job is to promote Donald Trump, the way that right-wing outlets and cable-news channels do. The reason many Americans view Trump negatively, in their estimation, is solely that reporters present non-positive information about Trump. If you only say nice things about him, people won\u2019t be divided! Simple enough.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason that the group most fervently supportive of Trump when he was president was Republicans who watched Fox News.<\/p>\n
This is an exercise in futility, certainly, but imagine if Greene or Donald Trump Jr. had taken a different tack. If Greene, better accustomed to objective media interviews, had just answered the question, contextualizing Vance\u2019s U.K. comment and (importantly) recognizing why this issue would be important to that news outlet. Or if the younger Trump had explained why his father wouldn\u2019t renew the separation policy \u2014 or why it made sense that he would. Each was a fair question that, instead of serving as an opportunity to inform viewers, got dumped into the cesspool of anti-media hostility.<\/p>\n
Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde distilled his party\u2019s view of the press succinctly in his speech at the convention Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to heal this country from the division that the left has brought. And, the media, you have to stop dividing us,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we can come together, we will win Wisconsin.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the media stops dividing the country by providing positive and negative information about candidates and their candidacies, Republicans will win Wisconsin, Hovde argues.<\/p>\n
That says more about the self-confidence of Hovde\u2019s party than it does about the media.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake came to the lectern of the Republican convention Tuesday, she began by extending an effusive welcome to everyone in attendance. Well, almost everyone. \u201cWait a minute. I don\u2019t mean that,\u201d Lake said. \u201cI don\u2019t welcome everybody in this meeting, in this room. The guys up in the fake news, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6223,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}