Two of Brian Stelter’s routine arguments against Donald Trump crumbled yesterday on his show Reliable Sources.
1. Stelter has often played up the idea of Trump’s “mental instability,” and flashed the possibility of the people around the president using the 25th Amendment to declare him incapacitated. So now when the idea of Joe Biden’s “cognitive decline” is emerging from Fox News, suddenly Stelter found it preposterous to launch such an attack.
In a mostly powder-puff interview with Biden spokesman T.J. Ducklo – who Stelter disclosed worked for NBC News before joining the Biden campaign – Stelter threw in one last point. “People know Biden, but some are also worried about his cognitive decline. That's the claim we're hearing, oftentimes on Fox News. Let me just show a few examples.”
Then came a medley of three-word or five-word snippets of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson mocking Biden's common verbal miscues. Stelter made zero reference to his own energetic tap-dancing on this piece of the dance floor.
STELTER: What's the Biden campaign going to do to respond to that daily drumbeat?
DUCKLO: Well, look, Brian, Fox News, and Donald Trump and his allies had been throwing everything they have at us for the last 10 months and voters on Super Tuesday roundly rejected what they are selling. I think that this campaign has shown you over the last 10 months that we can take everything that people throw at us. We can address it head- on. We can address it aggressively.
STELTER: But for eight more months, it's going to be dementia and Hunter Biden.
DUCKLO: But we can also -- we can also keep our eye on the ball. We can walk and chew gum. And we can address those lies -- and because they are, Brian. They are their lies, they are smears, they are invented claims.
Hunter Biden’s sleazy Ukraine gig is an “invented claim”? Stelter just said thank you, and moved on.
2. Stelter has often insisted that Donald Trump's criticism of the media shows a hostility to freedom of the press and endangers the safety of reporters. But in an interview with Bernie Sanders spokesman David Sirota, Stelter just asked for his thoughts, and no criticism.
STELTER: Earlier in the week, Sanders said don't believe what you hear in the media. He seems to be bristling at some of the coverage of his campaign. He's criticized the corporate media all season long. It's actually been a trademark of his even going back decades. What are your critiques of the news media's coverage of the Sanders campaign?
Sanders said don't believe the media -- just like Trump -- and all Stelter can ask is "what are your critiques, sir?" Sirota claimed it was about the media downplaying issues like climate and poverty, not about the media downplaying Bernie.
Then Stelter added Trump to the mix.
STELTER: A lot of people say, hey, Sanders is attacking the media just like Trump. I think he does it differently, but what do you think?
SIROTA: Yes, it's not the same critique. I mean, here's the deal. Trump, Donald Trump impugns the existence of the media, he makes clear -- he doesn't really think the media has a worthwhile role in our democracy. Bernie Sanders who has put out a plan to protect journalism, Bernie Sanders very much believes in the free press as an integral part of our democracy. But his critique is again, that the media often ignores the fundamentally important public policy issues that the media should be covering, and, frankly, that we need the media to be covering.
The main difference is Sanders didn't suggest the media was the "enemy of the people," at least not in those words. Another important difference is Trump is criticizing the press as a socialist mouthpiece, and Bernie is angry when it's NOT a socialist mouthpiece.
