Today’s segment on Meet The Press illustrates a technique that uses the media to dismiss administration wrongdoing. Chuck Todd called it out however timidly.
Chuck Todd called out GOP hack Hugh Hewitt but …
“Do you think, Carol and Phil, that the president would be here,” Chuck Todd asked. “If his first or second teams were still around him in the West Wing?”
“You know, what we found in our reporting is that the guardrails are gone,” Carol Leonnig replied. “The trajectory of this presidency is escalating towards a presidency of one, more chaos, less discipline in decision-making. The people who tried to hem him in, they’re out. He drove them out of the room. And he has mostly a lot of people around him who view themselves and their mission as telling him ‘yes.'”
‘Is there anybody left?” Chuck Todd asked. “Not a single person left that tries to restrain?”
“You know, the people in power left, like Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, they see their job as trying to get the president to a yes, of executing what he wants done in a way that they can defend publicly and in a way that is somewhat legal,” Phil Rucker replied. “But they’re not trying to challenge him. They’re trying to execute his orders and placate his conspiracies to some degree.”
“I have to disagree,” Hugh Hewitt interjected. “You had Robert O’Brien on last week, Secretary Pompeo the week before. These are strong individuals who will tell the president “no” when they think he’s doing something wrong. I completely reject the idea that Team Three, which this is, is somehow less able to tell the president hard facts. In fact, I think Team Three is the best team he’s had.”
If this is the team serving the president is the best team Republicans can offer for the American people, we are in trouble. Carol Leonnig would have none of Hewitt’s nonsensical retort.
“But Hugh, what about the part where Mick Mulvaney agrees to withhold the aid,” Carol Leonnig. “Which turns out to be against the law, the aid to Ukraine?
Hewitt dismissed her accurate assertion that what they did is against the law.
“I don’t know that it is against the law,” Hewitt replied. “I don’t believe that to be the case. I don’t think they made that case in the House managers’ brief.”
“Well, the Government Accountability believes that it was against the law,” Donna Edwards hit back factually.
Hewitt following Trump’s fascistic stance disregards the reality that it is Congress who makes laws and it is the Executive’s constitutional duty to execute it.
“The GAO does,” Hewitt fascistically responded. “It’s an arm of Congress. But I do not believe that has been shown in the managers’ brief.”
Chuck Todd did not let that stand as he reminded Hewitt about constitutional lawmaking in the United States.
“Congress is part of the government too,” Chuck Todd interjected. “I mean, they’re allowed to make laws as well.”
Reporters, activists, and pundits cannot be passive by allowing the administration’s hacks to get away with a technique that gives the impression to the viewers that the possibility exists that just maybe the President’s wrongdoing is up for debate. It isn’t so. The President broke the law and there must be no ambiguity. They should interrupt always and make that clear.