The only good case for putting bad-faith liars on TV is you can "hold them accountable" and "challenge" them
Almost nobody can pull this off because it's virtually impossible to fact-check liars who aren't there to engage in good faith and are just abusing your platform
Mehdi is the only interviewer who can really do this almost perfectly. I'd still argue that Crenshaw, a liar, gets a win just by being booked - he looks legitimate, when he's knowingly spreading false information. But nobody challenges them like Mehdi
Yes I wish more hosts would interview Republicans like this, which requires a lot of research and prep time and actually knowing the material and having the no-stakes-if-they-hate-you approach of cutting off a liar
But Crenshaw can still hold this up as "I took on the lying msm"
It's an imperfect situation to start with because an entire party operates in pure bad faith. So the best-case scenario for now is hoping that TV journalists admire this approach and try to copy it, instead of just giving all the Ron Johnsons an uninterrupted platform on MTP
In summary, this is a dilemma for news outlets who can’t write off an entire party but also with just a handful of exceptions aren’t equipped to challenge liars effectively in live interviews. But in general the “fewer chucks and more mehdis” rule should apply across the board
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The journalists here have apparently made the calculation that an unabashed and mendacious seditionist who sided with domestic terrorists is in fact a good-faith official who can be trusted at his word despite propagating the biggest lie in modern American history
What a disgusting act for a news outlet to give this horrible manipulator a platform to legitimize him as anything other than a shameless liar
This should have been the clearest moment that @NewDay decided Navarro was a proud and stubborn racist and would not be allowed back on TV to encourage anti-Asian discrimination
Instead he was invited back by @JohnBerman five days later as if it never happened
All news outlets happily gave Navarro a platform knowing he would shout “China virus”
Stop pretending it was just Trump who spread anti-Asian discrimination. Anyone who gave a platform to this racist (who also still lies about the election being stolen) knew what they were doing
John Barrasso denied that Biden won the election ON DECEMBER 14 when the electoral college certified it
Why wouldn't you mention this? Why wouldn't you ask him "why did you spread the lie" or "will you apologize for lying?"
Instead here he is blaming antifa in Portland
There were plenty of reporters around when Barrasso did this on Dec. 14 by the way. You could have any of them instead of just asking him "you seem like an honest guy, so what's your response to Nancy Pelosi?" and "what do you think about the filibuster?"
On Sunday @ThisWeekABC is platforming a Big Liar, John Barrasso
Barrasso claimed Trump won for seven weeks. On Dec. 14, when the electoral college confirmed the results, he was asked if Biden won and called it a “gotcha question”
Barrasso is enjoying a rewriting-history rehab tour from media-friendly personalities who offer him their TV show’s platform and don’t even mention that he spent almost two months trying to overturn the election
A few days before him it was @chucktodd who booked Barrasso on @MeetThePress and completely ignored his very recent history of spreading the racist Big Lie to deceive millions of people into thinking the election was stolen by illegal Black votes
This is an A+ worm-in-your-brain thing for @ABC to publish (it’s just a GOP smear) inadvertently exposing that some morons in the press:
a) miss Trump spreading lies every day and consider that a good thing and
b) think it “raises accountability questions” — yet don’t name them
If you’re just copying what Cillizza writes and adding a few extra quotes it means you’re generating an absurd conflict where none exists, and even midway through your story you admit Biden DID have a press conference but it wasn’t a “formal” one (no tuxedos) so it doesn’t count
The Republican Party is so goddamn good at creating bad-faith outrage and convincing media mooks with the lowest critical thinking skills that it’s a real story
Barrasso was on @MeetThePress three days ago. Not one question or mention of how he tried to overturn the election by lying about it being stolen. Not one follow-up on how he called it a "gotcha"
The worst actors in the mainstream media want you to forget Republicans did this