FATUOUS: When CBS News got to interview Trump...

TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2024

...it was fatuous all the way down: Let the word go forth to the nations:

There was a time when that bromide about the "Labor Day kickoff" actually made basic sense.

Long ago and far away, our presidential campaigns worked on a tighter time scale. Consider the now-iconic 1960 White House campaign:

Dear God! As of 1960, the surprisingly youngish Senator John F. Kennedy wasn't extremely well known. Despite that fact, he didn't announce that we would seek his party's nomination for president until January 2—until January 2 of that very year!

Somehow, the Democratic Party managed to complete its nomination process by the time of its national convention, which concluded on July 15. From there, it was a short hop to Labor Day—to the apocryphal start of the general election campaign. 

(Starting on September 26 of that year, Kennedy and Nixon held their very famous four (4) debates. In the present day, journalists traditionally repeat a famous inaccurate claim about the first of those four debates. By now, the repetition of the famous misstatement is an upper-end press corps tradition!)

Somehow, it seems that we were able to move things along just a bit faster back then. In a boon for New Hampshire motel owners, modern-day candidates routinely announce their candidacy several years in advance.

The campaigns go on and on and on, and then they go on some more. And what's the result of this long TV show?

By the time we finally vote in November, very few voters have any idea what the two nominees have proposed!

This year's campaign is quite different. Due to the incumbent president's withdrawal from the race, the Democratic nominee didn't launch her campaign until late July—until July 21 of this very year!

From that day forward, a cry has gone up from the Fox News Channel, with mainstream voices eventually joining in. Many voices reciting as one have brought the anguished cry forward at Fox:

When will she hold her first sit-down interview? Also, where is her policy platform?

There's nothing "wrong" with asking those questions. Indeed, it's as we noted yesterday:

Judged by traditional norms, Candidate Harris surely does have a whole lot of splainin' to do.

Judged by traditional norms, she needs to explain some of her own past statements—especially those she advanced when she sought her party's nomination for president back in 2019.

(She announced her candidacy in January of that year—in January 2019, almost two years out. So it goes with the expanded time frame for these quadrennial battles.)

Judge by traditional norms, Candidate Harris also needs to define her policy platform. And as part of the traditional game which constantly baffles our mainstream journalists, she will almost surely have to explain her role in various actions which were taken by President Biden.

This last requirement is based on a fact which is universally known at the Fox News Channel:

If you're vice president of the U.S., that means that you established all the policies of the administration. 

No, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But any time a sitting vice president seeks to succeed an outgoing president. our mainstream journalists insist on leading us through that that deeply puzzling swamp.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—but our nation's mainstream political journalism is often baldly fatuous. Consider what happened last week when CBS News was afforded the opportunity to interview Candidate Trump.

In yesterday afternoon's report, we offered a bit of background. At the New York Times, Bret Stephens listed the various questions he would pose to Candidate Harris if only she was willing to submit to an interview.

For the record, there's nothing wrong with Bret Stephens' smarts. As we showed you yesterday, his weekly exchange with Gail Collins went in part like this:

Kamala Harris Has Left the Building

[...] 

Bret: Voters will want to figure out whether [Candidate Harris is] a pragmatist (good), an opportunist (not good) or a phony (doubleplusungood). One way to find out is to insist that she sit down for some serious journalistic interviews and answer a few difficult questions. I can think of some.

Gail: Can’t argue with you about the interviews. Harris isn’t even doing press conferences and that’s just wrong. Hope she’ll make a turn now that she’s the official nominee.

[...]

Gail: If you were her questioner, what would you ask?

Bret: In no particular order: If grocery stores, whose profit margins hover between 1 and 3 percent, are price gouging, what do you say about Apple, whose margins are above 25 percent? Do you believe, as you signaled in 2019, that illegal immigrants should be entitled to free health care? Is the phrase “from the river to the sea” antisemitic? Will you use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? If the record of the Biden-Harris administration is so strong, why do a plurality of Americans describe the current state of the economy as bad or very bad?

Gail: The economy is not bad! But go on.

Bret: What causes inflation? Have you witnessed any instances when President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished and were you worried about his ability to serve out a second term? Would you send American military forces to fight for Taiwan if it were attacked by China? Name one liberal position with which you disagree and why. How will a Harris-Walz administration differ in policies from a Biden-Harris one?

There's nothing "wrong" with the questions Stephens proposed. Some of those questions make perfect sense—and as we noted yesterday, Journalists Collins and Stephens agreed:

Candidate Harris should do some serious interviews, during which she'll be forced to answer difficult questions. 

There's nothing "wrong" with that prescription—but we offered an obvious question:

When will Candidate Trump be asked to sit down for some serious interviews—for "serious journalistic interviews" during which he'll be forced to answer "difficult questions?"

When will that demand be voiced? Due to the normalization of Candidate Trump, it didn't occur to Stephens to state that demand, and it didn't occur to Collins.

We offer the following question:

When was the last time Candidate Trump sat down for a serious interview? When was the last time Candidate Trump engaged in something that can be described as a real news conference—a real news conference where's he was required to answer difficult questions?

We'd say that it's been a long, long time since any such sessions occurred. But due to the normalization of Trump's extremely strange behaviors, such questions keep going unasked.

When will Trump be forced to answer real questions as part of a serious interview? We'll guess the answer is never. As an example of what we mean, consider what happened last Monday, when CBS News was granted the opportunity of speaking with this contender.

It fell to Caitlin Huey-Burns to conduct the interview with Trump. Concerning the interview itself—and concerning the way it was reported—we would have to say this:

The journalism was fatuous all the way down.

Huey-Burns seems like the world's nicest person. That said, her performance this day journeyed into the realm of the fatuous, and then it just kept going.

As a general matter, her questions were an embarrassment. In response to those fatuous questions, the candidate routinely offered his usual rambling non-answer answers. 

His rambling filibusters were often built on claims which were baldly inaccurate—but Huey-Burns never piped up. She offered no challenge, no protest.

The interview itself was a joke, but so was the way the interview was reported by CBS News:

Muckety-mucks at this upper-end org praised Huey-Burns for her brilliant performance. In fact, her performance was D-minus all the way down. So was the way the interview was packaged by her superiors.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but in the present day, our high-end journalism is routinely amazingly poor.

Tomorrow, we'll walk you through this latest stone-cold example. As boo-birds scream for Harris to speak, this pseudo-interview with Candidate Trump was fatuous all the way down.

Harris has had one month to prepare. Candidate Trump has had years.

The boo-birds are calling for Harris to speak. By way of contrast, Trump's endless refusals to make basic sense have been normalized all the way down. 

Tomorrow: "Caitlin's excellent interview," the network's Costa said