Taming the media

Handle the press on your terms, not theirs

The Bezos Post sent Meryl Kornfield to the cornfields of Iowa to get a quote from Vivek Ramaswamy so she could write that he’s a white supremacist. She made the mistake of asking him the question in public, at a Ramaswamy rally, because that gave him the opportunity to humiliate her in public.

And he did.

Kornfield cited some article in the New York Times. You could hear the eyes roll.

KORNFIELD: Do you condemn white supremacy and white nationalism?

RAMASWAMY: I mean, what? Who are you with?

KORNFIELD: The Washington Post.

RAMASWAMY: Washington Post, so potato/potato.

Of course, I condemn any form of vicious racial discrimination in this country, but I think the presumption of your question is fundamentally based on a falsehood that this is really the main form of racial discrimination we see in this country today. Institutionalized racism is institutionalized racial discrimination that we see, that doesn’t come from somehow discriminating against people on some tenet of white supremacy. It is based on affirmative action, discriminating against people based on the color of their skin in a way that is actually institutionalized today.

Was there a point in our prior national history where there have been vicious forms of anti-black or anti-brown discrimination in this country, after the Civil War and otherwise, yes. But you're looking in the rearview mirror and using that to pose a question that today is so far removed from what the reality is in America today. This myth of white supremacy, the closest you can find is Jussie Smollett, where you all, speaking of trust in the media, jumped up and down over some false narrative. The best way you’re able to find your best instance of white supremacy was a guy who was actually paying his other fellow people to be staging something that didn’t happen. So, stop picking on this farce of some figment of something that exists at an infinitesimally small fringe of the American public today and open your eyes to the actual real threats that we face.

I think it is, frankly, questions and framing like that that cause the American public to lose all trust in the mainstream media, I’m sorry to say, for good reason.

KORNFIELD: You didn’t say that you condemn white supremacy though.

The eyes rolled again. He then lectured her on racial discrimination. It was a good takedown and you can read it here.

Having had her ass removed from her head and handed to her, Kornfield filed a report that no one but a Martian or DC insider would believe.

They slapped on it the headline, “Ramaswamy increasingly embraces fringe theories, far-right claims in Iowa.

“In the final days leading up to the Iowa caucus, the political newcomer has dug in on conspiracy theories — an approach some Republican strategists view as an effort to garner attention and some experts warn is dangerous.”

Kornfield is a handmaiden to Bezos, wasting her youth smearing people to amuse the second-richest man in the world.

Ramaswamy handled her better than Nikki Haley handled that weird question about why we had a civil war. Trump later said, “I don’t know that it’s going to have an impact, but, you know, I’d say slavery is sort of the obvious answer as opposed to about three paragraphs of bullshit."

Ramaswamy’s handling of Kornfield was good but not Pierre Poilievre Good.

Pierre Poilievre leads the loyal opposition to Justin Castreau in Canada. His seems like a task the gods used to punish Prometheus for giving fire to mortals because in my lifetime Canadians have gone from being stout-hearted men to being soft-headed socialists. They have a state-run health system that they are willing to die for.

But Poilievre marches on. He gave an interview in a field to Don Urquhart, editor of the Times Chronicle, eating an apple as the editor went through his questions. A video of the interview went viral, as they say, as Poilievre gave a lesson on how to handle the press.

It was the most famous eating of an apple since Eve.

The Canadian Broadcasting Company was impressed and did a story on the exchange.

“You're obviously taking the populist pathway,” Urquhart says in the video.

“What does that mean?” Poilievre asks.

“Certainly you tap very strong ideological language quite frequently,” Urquhart says.

“Like what?” Poilievre asks.

“Left wing, you know, this and that, right wing,” Urquhart replies.

Poilievre responds that he never really talks about the left or right.

“I don’t really believe in that,” he says.

“A lot of people would say that you’re simply taking a page out of the Donald Trump book,” says Urquhart.

“A lot of people? Like which people would say that?” says Poilievre while biting into an apple.

The apple is the key to the interview because it promotes the image of a relaxed Poilievre who, while interested in the interview, is taking the interview casually. He is cool, calm and charming. He did so well that when I saw the video the first time, I thought Urquhart was an actor but it turned out this was not a set-up. This was real life. The reporter was just plain out of his league.

Republicans can learn from Poilievre. He was not confrontational but conversational. He made Urquhart explain the questions, which defused them. In fact, in the exchange the CBC used, Poilievre asked all the questions: “What does that mean?” “Like what?” “A lot of people? Like which people would say that?”

He was relaxed. Instead of getting all angry and making the story about his hostility, Poilievre made the story about the questions the reporter asked.

And Poilievre also got it on tape so he could back up his version of the story had the reporter played fast and loose with the facts.

Ramaswamy used a tape on Kornfield and it worked. He was not through. He went on NBC and pushed back.

Kane at Citizen Free Press tweeted that video and said:

Vivek handles Regime Media like a boss.

NBC News reporter Dasha Burns has a meltdown as Vivek shreds her scripted reality.

I learned of all three confrontations with the press on Twitter. Under Elon Musk, it is back to being a public forum that provides information that you cannot get elsewhere.

It also has funny stuff, such as this stupid thing.

Millions of Americans have a contempt for the liberal-run media. Instead of using that contempt to their advantage, Republicans keep going on CNN and the rest. They seek to impress the press. It is suicidal.

For example, John McCain captured lightning in a bottle with Sarah Palin. Rather than let her do her thing, he threw her to the wolves with interviews by ABC, NBC and the rest. Then he had her do SNL, full-well knowing its producer Lorne Michaels hated her. The woman who spoofed her made it clear she wanted to stop Palin’s election to VP.

Has there ever been a Republican presidential nominee that the press liked?

If not, why do Republicans seek the media’s approval?

I never understood why President Trump gave interviews to the New York Times over and over again. He came off as needy and pathetic as he appeared to seek its approval. I am all in for Trump again this year but he could learn from Ron DeSantis, who as governor has used alternative media and ignored the legacy media.

The whine from the embittered journalists is oddly sweet.

On July 31, 2022, NBC complained, “The GOP often describes itself as at war with mainstream media. Now it looks like some Republicans are going one step further and shutting out the full media from GOP events altogether. It’s yet another blow to the increasingly beleaguered notion that citizens across the political spectrum can occupy a shared reality.

“For the first time in the seven-year history of the annual Sunshine Summit in Florida, the conference restricted media access to the event last weekend, according to Politico. It specifically blocked mainstream media outlets based on the rationale that they’re congenitally anti-conservative.”

Wow. Republicans finally are acting rationally.

Earlier, Steve Bousquet, a columnist for the Sun Sentinel, complained that reporters were locked out of an elections bill signing on May 6, 2021. That the press in Florida hated the bill (now a law) goes without saying, but I guess I said it anyway.

U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reported, “Bousquet said the event, held in a hotel conference room, resembled a political rally. Reporters could see part of the event through a window, he said, while some watched on their phones as the Fox News broadcast carried the governor signing the bill.

“Bill signings are not required to be held publicly, and sometimes governors sign legislation behind closed doors. However, Bousquet, a longtime Florida political journalist, said he had never encountered a similar situation for a bill signing, particularly on a piece of very high profile legislation.”

I am not really sure how a governor signing a bill into law is such a big deal. It mainly gives reporters another chance to either promote or condemn the new law.

The piece ended:

According to Florida First Amendment Foundation staff attorney Virginia Hamrick, the state’s Sunshine Law, which requires meetings between certain officials to be public, does not apply to the bill signing. However, she said that restricting access to the event raises First Amendment issues. “We're concerned by it,” Hamrick told the Tracker.

It is a small button to push, but pushing the button bugs reporters and delights those voters who gave up on the press.

Over at Harvard, the school with an endowment fund worth $50 billion and leadership that ain’t worth a nickel, the complaint last year was “Ron DeSantis is weaponizing partisan media — and weakening independent sources of news.”

Weaponizing is a weak word used by weak people for their weak arguments. In this case, the argument was that the liberal media is independent and the conservative media is partisan. DeSantis is giving exclusives to conservative media. Waah.

Under that headline, Jason Garcia wrote, “The governor’s efforts to prop up supplicant sources of news — while trying to destabilize and delegitimize independent ones — make for a dangerous combination, said Michael Barfield, the director of public access at the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a watchdog group that supports transparent government and investigative journalism.”

When Barfield holds the press and the FBI accountable for the covering up of Hunter’s laptop, then I will call him a watchdog. But for now he is just a mutt barking at a car passing by the house.

Barfield said, “This is what state-run media looks like.

“Russia, China, and Venezuela use it as a tool to control the message. The strategy has far-reaching and negative implications for freedom of the press and democracy. History is full of painful lessons when the government interferes with and manipulates a free and independent press.”

The reality is the Russian Hoax and the rest of the coverage of the Trump presidency showed the deep state’s power over the media.

But DeSantis, Ramaswamy and Trump are changing things for the better. Their willingness to stand up to these bullies is encouraging others.

David Strom at Hot Air wrote a nice piece, “Conservatives Are Mastering the Media War.”

I would not go that far but he did say, “The MSM’s power comes from shaping the Narrative. That power has to be taken away. Trump made progress by using the sledgehammer he wields so well, but only a scalpel will do the trick for many people.

“This is the way. Force the media to define its terms, defend its premises, and refuse to be baited into answering stupid questions.”

It also helps to eat an apple while you are doing it because an apple a day keeps the doctor away — and keeps you cool, calm and charming. This isn’t that difficult. It’s not like newspapers and TV shows are staffed by Einsteins.

I mean, instead of procreating and raising a family, Kornfield is flying to Iowa to do gotchas on the guy running fourth for the Republican presidential nomination. Does anyone remember who covered Alan Cranston for the Washington Post in his campaign 40 years ago?

My oldest son just turned 40.