Along with his viral comments on Chris Cillizza’s podcast defending the liberal media’s cover-up of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, former Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd used the Monday episode of his own podcast to claim “most people in the press are not elites at all” and deride press criticism as “insult[ing]” and “biased” in and of itself that should be dismissed.
Todd first addressed the White House Correspondents Dinners (WHCD) weekend, calling it “awkward weekend for a number of reasons” and most notably “the Trump administration trying to — trying to exploit the weekend” and “desperate to try to make the media look like they’re part of the opposition with the Democratic Party.”
Fact-check, Chuck: True. Why? It’s because they are.
He went on with more derision of media criticism (which one could extrapolate to include what we do here at NewsBusters). After whining “[t]his has been a campaign tactic of Donald Trump and his aggressive right-wing for some time,” Todd uncorked a silly take about how you shouldn’t trust anyone who calls the media biased:
As those who’ve watched Todd for years, he predictably made a few points more people outside his liberal base could agree with:
But the other awkward aspect of the White House Correspondents weekend. He said it’s always felt out of touch, right? Here we are with an economy that is not just slowing down, it may turn into a recession, and here’s the Washington press corps hobnobbing with as many elites as they could convince to come to the dinner in black tie. It — it is an awkward look, at best. I do think that the Washington press corps should be able to celebrate itself every year, but maybe there’s a better way to do this. Does it have to be black tie and elites? Can it be something different, you know, can it be something a bit more open to the people? Who knows. But there’s, I think celebrating journalism, celebrating those that are doing it right, is a good thing.
But again, it was short-lived as he went back to a mind-numbingly tone-deaf take about the press.
Instead of admitting the Washington press’s disconnect from real America is a problem, Todd’s focus was changing the WHCD because it “makes it easy to weaponize sort of elitism against the press, which is something we ought to fight against[.]”
Then came the laugh-out-loud claim that, if one were to just think of national reporters, is pants-on-fire false:
Later in the show, he had an interesting exchange with beloved liberal media darling, Congressman Dan Goldman (D-NY). As Todd argued the attorney general pick needs to become more independent of the president that appoints them, Goldman remarked how, prior to Trump (in his worldview), “[t]he idea that a president does not weigh in on any individual prosecutions was a norm created after Watergate, especially, but even prior to that — that was just accepted.”
Todd interjected to further this lament, saying “we in the media enforced it when Barack Obama rolled his eyes at the emails with Hillary Clinton” and proclaimed “[i]t was we in the press that said, hey, you’re putting your finger — are you putting your finger on the scale while your Justice Department’s doing that” and forced him to “back off.”
Much of the podcast, however, was an interview with Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman. It included a fascinating exchange about the widespread drying up of local media (which Todd is hoping to recruit investors to fund).
Wasserman also seemed to admit the far-left base forced the national media’s hand by nationalizing every last special election (click “expand”):
TODD: I mean, is this really like we have — how much do you think we’ve mainstreamed interest in political handicapping?
WASSERMAN: It’s amazing to me, Chuck. Like, as a 13 year old kid who was getting into this stuff and, you know, living in the Jersey suburbs, and I would read the Almanac of American Politics at the library cause I couldn’t check out reference books. But and you know, I’d watch Inside Politics with Judy Woodruff and Bernard Shaw. Back then, it was inconceivable that a special election night would get wall-to-wall coverage for, for a House race, right? And I think beginning with Jon Ossoff in 2017 and that obsession once Trump got in power, Democrats just, you know, they — their enthusiasm among the donor class and the activist class went through the roof. What can we do to stop this? And it all funneled into things that ordinarily wouldn’t be all that earth shaking —
TODD: Right.
WASSERMAN: — and suddenly they became these shiny objects and so, now you’ve got a lot of — a lot of teenagers who, you know, at the age I was when I was first getting into this, they’re, they’re following this in a — in a pretty obsessive way. What we’ve lost is a lot of the local news component to it. I mean [inaudible]
TODD: No, I mean, this is obviously — you know this is my obsession.
WASSERMAN: Right.
TODD: And you know, I, I think about the Hotline, and you — you know, back when I was there, and I don’t know what we would have done if there had been no local political journalists.
WASSERMAN: That’s right. right, because we’re getting all these clips, and now where are we really getting our clips from? It’s from press releases, it’s from the party committees, to some extent. There is some, you know, regional reporting left that’s got its ear to the ground —
TODD: You have to do your own to the ground. I mean, that’s what — that’s what I had to transition the hotline to, you know?
WASSERMAN: That’s right. And, and these days it really is about building those connections with the general consultants —
TODD: Right.
WASSERMAN: — for the campaigns to get a sense of — of what is happening because there, you know, there are fewer intermediaries and — and you got to follow everyone’s social media too, and try — and try and unspin it. You gotta build the relationships with the pollsters who are covering or working on a wide variety of these campaigns with the general consultants with a lot of operatives who know their states well —
TODD: Right.
WASSERMAN: — because there are fewer media intermediaries than there used to be. And I think a lot of the statehouse startups and — and the kinds of things that you’re working on and passionate about have potential to — to be similar to what we used to have, but they’re, they’re gonna look a lot different.
To see the relevant transcript from The Chuck Toddcast on April 28, click here.
