🎤

 Peter Baker excused Kristen Welker live on TeeVee this morning. As Jay Rosen put it:

On the show, Welker raised the criticism she knew NBC would get for doing this, and asked Peter Baker to respond. He said it's unthinkable that journalists stop asking questions of a major party candidate, even though it's true that Trump lies and constructs his own reality.

The press, in other words, is a helpless megaphone that can only take transcription and hold the microphone 🎤.

Maybe they could learn a few tools of rhetoric; you know, the kind of stuff I taught to freshman college students in community college:

Fascism throughout the interview," she continues. "He calls himself a hero, a martyr. Everything is corrupt, according to him. He is the only truthteller, according to him. The only one who has common sense and wants what is good for the nation. Consuming fascist propaganda like this makes you even more vulnerable to fascist propaganda. It is engineered/designed to create the conditions under which fascism flourishes. You cannot put Trump on TV without normalizing fascism in America." 

She cited his tactics including "ad hominem, tu quoque, conspiracy, lies, false accusations of corruption, attacking the interviewer, [and] frame warfare." 

"Every response he gives is an evasion," she closed. "He will never answer your questions to your satisfaction. You cannot hold him accountable. You just can't. Trump using anchoring (they like me, we're the same) to talk about his relationship with fascist leaders while also claiming that he wants peace is the kind of rhetorical trick that confuses the brain and makes it difficult to understand what he actually believes."

I had a little educational game as a kid (it was meant to be small; came in a box about big enough to hold 2 decks of cards). It was called “Propaganda,” and was supposed to train young minds in recognizing, and rejecting, rhetorical tricks like “logical fallacies.” Or propaganda, in other words.

This during the Red Scare, when “propaganda” meant anything said by the Soviet Union. To be honest, my bullshit detector was programmed more by MAD Magazine. Halcyon days for trying to teach us to track liars, IOW.

And politicians lie, there’s no question about that. Not one Texas GOP senator told the truth after they acquitted Ken Paxton. But still journalists had to report what they said, so we’d know who the liars are. Or just because they can’t ignore the Senators who just voted in spite of all the evidence, and who then blame anyone they can see for what they just did. Journalists don’t question that, do they? They just firmly hold the microphone.

Is Trump increasing his supporters with that NBC interview? Extending his power over American democracy?

Naahhh! But as someone else pointed out, Brett Baier and Jonathan Swan know how to handle Trump (and he’ll never make that mistake again!). All Welker did was make a splashy start to her new job, get Peter Baker to cover her exposed derrière (“The kewl kids said it was okay!”), and prove MTP is the most ignorable hour on television.

Oh, and prove the “Fourth Estate” is a set of ragged clothes fluttering in the wind.

Welker didn’t do this interview because Trump is “the leader in the GOP primaries. No one is voting in those for months. She did it because she knew Trump would draw eyeballs and comments (as long as they spell your name right, huh Kristen?) for her first day at her new job. And maybe get that audience MTP hasn’t gotten in years.

At least they’re talking about her, right?