Top journalists' startling lack of skill!

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2020

Alcindor, Jiang crash and burn:
"How could I be losing to this guy?"

Long ago, Michael Dukakis, played by Jon Lovitz, uttered a version of that lament during a skit on Saturday Night Live. "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy," Lovitz specifically said.

That puzzlement comes to mind when we consider the way our high-end reporters get their clocks cleaned by Donald J. Trump. It happens day after day in his televised prime-time "briefings."

Today, we'll focus on two recent attempts to challenge Trump made by two high-end reporters. We refer to Weijia Jiang of CBS News and Yamiche Alcindor of the PBS NewsHour.

Jiang and Alcindor attempted to question and challenge Trump concerning his crazy past statements about the coronavirus. More specifically, they questioned Trump about the ways he downplayed the threat of the virus all through February and into the middle of March.

Jiang attempted to question Trump at last Sunday's briefing. The next day, Alcindor gave it a try. Her original question went like this:
ALCINDOR (4/20/20): [My] second question is about your language and how you approached the coronavirus at the beginning.

I interviewed someone who says that his family got sick
—they went to a funeral in mid-March, and they said mainly because the president wasn’t taking it seriously. He said, “If the president had had a mask on, if he was saying that we should stay home, then I would have stayed home. Instead, I have family members—"

But he said his family members were sick and because they were listening to you. Do you feel like or are you concerned that downplaying the virus maybe got some people sick?
In theory, this was a rather hard-hitting question. Alcindor was asking if the commander felt that some people had become sick—presumably, if he felt that some people had died—because of the crazy things he said all the way through mid-March.

In theory, this was a hard-hitting question. It also represents a challenge Alcindor shouldn't have been able to lose.

As we noted earlier this week, Trump said a million crazy things all through February and then on into March. How batshit crazy was this man's behavior? Here are some leading howlers:
February 10: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

February 25: "You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are...getting better. They’re all getting better."

February 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."

February 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

March 6: "[Holding rallies] doesn't bother me at all."

March 10: "We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."
Presumably, those are the kinds of crazy statements Alcindor's source had been talking about. Quite literally, this deeply disordered, delusional man had been invoking the concept of miracles to wish the virus away.

We had fifteen people with the virus, he said. Within days, that would be close to zero. As of today, of course, more than 46,000 people have died—and that's just the official count.

Has any major public official ever made a crazier bunch of statements? Alcindor had every reason to wonder how and why an American president could ever have said such things. That said:

It's astounding to think that none of the journalists in our endless "daily briefings" had ever managed to nail Trump down concerning these crazy remarks. And as with Dukakis, so too here:

With examples like those to present to Trump, how could Alcindor fail? Putting that another way, how could our upper-end journalists possibly be losing to this guy?

If you want to see how they manage to lose, just examine the transcript of Alcindor's exchange with Trump that day. Needless to say, he immediately began praising himself for his "travel ban" with China. This is the way her narcissistic/sociopathic "answer" began:
TRUMP (continuing directly): And a lot of people love Trump, right? A lot of people love me. You see them all the time, right? I guess I’m here for a reason, you know. To the best of my knowledge, I won, and I think we’re going to win again. I think we’re going to win in a landslide.

But just so you understand, you’re talking about March, right? And yet—

[INAUDIBLE CROSSTALK]

Excuse me, excuse me. I know, I understand. And yet in January, a certain date, you know the date better than I do, we put on a ban of China where China can’t come in, and before March we put on a ban in Europe where Europe can’t come in. So how could you say I wasn’t taking it seriously?
After Trump had imposed his "ban," how could anyone possibly have thought that he wasn't talking the virus seriously?

The answer to that is blindingly obvious. The answer goes something like this:
February 10: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

February 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."

February 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

March 6: "[Holding rallies] doesn't bother me at all."
Duh! That's why people might have thought that they weren't being warned!

Like a miracle, the virus would disappear. As of February 26, we had a total of fifteen cases, and it would soon be close to zero.

That's how a person might have thought that Trump wasn't taking the virus seriously. On the basis of statements like those, people who believe in Trump went out and got themselves sick and killed. And that, of course, is the very premise with which Alcindor began her question.

But good God! As you can see from the transcript, Alcindor didn't cite any of those crazy statements when Trump challenged her basic premise. Instead, when she got a chance to follow up on her original question, you'll see that she moved on to this:
ALCINDOR: You held rallies in February and in March. And there are some American—

TRUMP: Oh, I don’t know about rallies. I really don’t know about rallies. I know one thing [CROSSTALK], I haven’t left the White House in months, except for a brief moment to give a wonderful ship, The Comfort—

ALCINDOR: You held a rally in March.

TRUMP: I don’t know. Did I hold a rally? I’m sorry. I held a rally. Did I hold the rally? Let me tell you. In January when I did this, you had virtually no cases and no deaths, and yet I put [the ban] on.
When Alcindor got a chance to support of her original point, she didn't confront Trump with the crazy array of things he had said. Instead, she switched her field. He's held a rally in March!

The day before, in last Sunday's session, Jiang had posed a similar question to Trump. Trump had been complaining that the World Health Organization hadn't raised an alarm about the virus soon enough. Despite being interrupted several times by Trump, Jiang managed to voice this initial question:
JIANG (4/19/20): I have a question about something you said on Thursday, which is that you were angry because information about the virus should have been told to us earlier and a lot sooner. People knew it was happening, and people did not want to talk about it.

Many Americans are saying the exact same thing about you, that you should’ve warned them the virus was spreading like wildfire through the month of February instead of holding rallies with thousands of people. Why did you wait so long—

[Interruptions]

And why did you not have social distancing until March 16th?
You'll note that Jiang has already posed several different things. She started out saying that he should have warned the public sooner. But as he voiced her several complaints, she too never cited the lunatic things he had said.

Like Alcindor, Jiang got blown off course by Trump's distractions and insults. Neither scribe confronted Trump with his crazy statements.

Trump has been holding his daily prime-time gong-shows for an eternity now. Amazingly, none of our upper-end journalists have ever managed to confront him with the crazy things he said during February and on into mid-March.

On at least two occasions, he invoked the concept of the miraculous to wish the virus away. On another occasion, he said we'd soon have almost no cases. Today, the official count of confirmed cases has moved past 800,000.

Day after day, the somnolent scribes of the upper-end press sit inside the daily briefings and snore through Trump's array of crazy misstatements and blatant non sequiturs. None has ever shown the moxie to confront him about these crazy claims—and to insist that he provide an explanation for the ridiculous things he said.

The children are simply too polite to engage in such behavior. Even when two journalists tried to challenge Trump on this horrible record, they quickly became so distracted that they didn't even confront this disordered man with his most famous crazy examples.

Jiang and Alcindor were playing a winning hand when they asked Trump about the crazy things he had said. But Trump responded with insults and non sequiturs, and the pair of high-end journalists were quickly blown off course.

As a group, our journalists accept the insults and they come back for more. In their underwhelming hands, these Q-and-As quickly turn into a daily TV show, No Distraction Left Behind.

It's astounding to watch these silent lambs refusing to serve the nation. Even when they try to serve, the don't know how to win.

Jiang and Alcindor are surely very nice people. Lawrence O'Donnell even hailed Alcindor as "intrepid."

Our scribes have lovely courtesy skills. But oh what kind of journalism is this, which goes from hopeless to worse?

Tomorrow: What should be done—a list

41 comments:

  1. "That puzzlement comes to mind when we consider the way our high-end reporters get their clocks cleaned by Donald J. Trump."

    This is idiotic. Trump doesn't win his interactions with reporters. He reveals himself every day to be an incompetent. The only people who think differently are conservatives. They think Trump is "owning" the libs. But Trump has all the power and reporters are impotent because all they can do is interrupt a few times until Trump moves on. If they made any bigger fuss, they would be asked to leave. Trump never wins an exchange on merit -- he just bloviates (filibusters) until he can call on someone else.

    But why would Somerby say this? If it looks like reporters are losing to Trump, that makes it pretty obvious that Somerby is himself a conservative, a card-carrying member of The Other, and not any kind of liberal. Because liberals don't see these exchanges the way Somerby and his friends on the right do.

    ReplyDelete
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  2. As of today, it is 48,868 and counting, not 46,000.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Neither scribe confronted Trump with his crazy statements."

    Both reporters confronted him with his rallies and his failure to act, to warn the public.

    There is no law that says that reporters must ask Trump about his crazy statements or they are incompetent. Somerby has manufactured this criterion in order to attack two legitimate reporters doing their job well.

    Somerby says: "It's astounding to watch these silent lambs refusing to serve the nation. Even when they try to serve, the don't know how to win."

    Trump has no intention of answering any question with anything except lies and insults and garbage. It is not the reporters fault if he evades their questions -- no matter what they ask.

    There is no magic question that will pin Trump down.

    And true to form, Somerby does not mention the patronizing sexist treatment of Jiang by Trump, another kind of distraction, another attack on both the press and the women who are working in it.

    Both women had Trump dead-to-rights as they asked him about his rallies. There would have been no different or better outcome had they asked him about his prior statements.

    The only way to win against Trump is to kick him out of office in November. The power imbalance is too great to "win" against Trump during a press briefing. But Somerby is in his own fantasyland, one where he imagines a super-hero reporter who can force Trump to fess up, simply by confronting him with his own words. If that were possible, it would have happened back in the first days -- but it didn't, and not because of any lack of guts among reporters. Trump has no shame.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Both women had Trump dead-to-rights

      Yes, they did. But, that's not supposed to be their job. Their questions amounted to,

      "Over five weeks ago, you made some predictions that turned out to be very wrong. Don't you agree that you did something terrible?"

      It's appropriate for the opposing party to continue to pester and harp on past mistakes by the President.* However, reporters are supposed to be impartially helping the public to understand current events. Unfortunately, these two reporters are well described as "Democratic operatives with bylines."**

      * Some would say that during a crisis, the opposing party should be less belligerent.

      ** Credit Instapundit for this phrase.

      Delete
    2. DinC, the possibility exists that you are either an idiot, a cultish follower of Trump, or a troll, but do you seriously think that a deadly pandemic is the right time for reporters to simply become stenographers of whatever bullroar the White House chooses to throw at them? The exact opposite is true: the public desperately needs the truth, and not PR. Trump is a pathological liar.

      Delete
    3. We need the truth about the virus. We need the truth about the availability of vaccines, medicines, tests, hospital beds, ventilators, PPE, etc. All that information is made available in the daily pressers. We do not need to hear repeated over and over ad nauseam that Trump was overly optimistic five weeks ago.

      Delete
    4. Hillary Clinton calling only half the Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables" is overly optimistic.
      What Trump did is called "criminal negligence".

      Delete
  4. As of today, when this essay appeared, the US number of cases was not 800,000 but 868,482. Every person counts and 68,482 is more than three times the size of an average American city.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Somerby says:
    “After Trump had imposed his "ban," how could anyone possibly have thought that he wasn't talking the virus seriously?

    The answer to that is blindingly obvious. The answer goes something like this:”

    ...

    March 6:"[Holding rallies] doesn't bother me at all."

    “Duh! That's why people might have thought that they weren't being warned!”

    And then Somerby complains:

    “When Alcindor got a chance to support of her original point, she didn't confront Trump with the crazy array of things he had said. Instead, she switched her field. He's held a rally in March!”

    Perhaps Somerby’s words on my screen only appear to be written in English, but it would seem that Alcindor responded with one of the blindingly obvious answers that Somerby listed.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ha-ha. You're surprised, dear Bob, that your dembot hacks (including, sadly, yourself recently) are pulverized by Our Beloved Commander? Lol.

    Thanks for the laughs, dear Bob.

    As for your nitpicking into what Our Beloved Commander have said over the course of several rather hectic months, remember dear Bob: unlike your zombie robots (a-la Carpenter's They Live), we humyn beings say what comes to our minds. We don't 'clear' what we say with 69 hundred lawyers and 7 thousand focus groups, dear Bob. We say what we think, we learn, and we change our minds. We are humyn.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "we bots say what the establishment wants us to say"

      Fixed it for you.

      Delete
    2. But of course you do, dear dembot. What else is new.

      Delete
    3. None of your shtick, that's for sure.

      Delete
  7. Jiang: “you should’ve warned them the virus was spreading like wildfire through the month of Februaryinstead of holding rallies with thousands of people. “

    Somerby: “she [Jiang] too never cited the lunatic things he had said.”

    The same goes for Jiang as for Alcindor: She confronted him with the fact the he held rallies after knowing the seriousness of it. Again, Somerby lists a statement by Trump about holding rallies as a proper retort. Jiang goes one better and notes, correctly, that Trump actually held rallies, which is presumably worse than merely saying he has no problem holding rallies.

    Also, how is this not a valid answer to Trump’s lack of concern about the seriousness of the virus:
    “And why did you not have social distancing until March 16th?”

    ReplyDelete
  8. @DinC

    Trump’s denial and inaction killed people in this country. That must not be swept under the rug.

    And unlike Bob Somerby, I don’t give Trump some bullshit pass saying things like “he’s mentally ill, so he’s not really at fault, and I pity him.”

    Frankly, his willingness to wave Trump’s guilt away is as appalling as yours.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Personally, what I find appalling is liberal complacency in the face of the horrific loss of life in New York state, criminally mismanaged by gov. Cuomo.

      Surely banning ambulance staff from any attempt to resuscitate patients with cardiac arrest would be the last straw for any humyn being. But no siree Bob, not for liberal zombies.

      Delete
    2. It’s called triage, necessitated by the criminally negligent denial and inaction of the Trump White House, aka Jared In Charge

      Delete
    3. Moo moo last I looked NY is one of 50 states that make up the united states of america.

      You should have spent less time being a cum-dumpster in school and more time learning.

      Delete
    4. No, dembot, that is not what's called 'triage'.

      Your liberal-zombie indifference to the sufferings of the victims of gov Cuomo saddens me greatly. It's positively inhumyn.

      Delete
    5. Moo moo could you please keep it down! I'm trying to skull fuck your mother's corpse.

      Delete
  9. DinC and Mao,
    Why don't you both go spend a day at the beach in Florida and on the way home get a tattoo in Atlanta?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sure, dembot. How's life in your bunker so far? Enough wipes and respirators for the next 10 years?

      Delete
    2. better than being dead; shithead.
      trump is calling you. go suck his cock.
      hurry up, punk.

      Delete
    3. Mao, can you see any protesters against Putin’s lockdown out there on Savushkina Street?

      Delete
    4. Boxes of wipes, but no Prozac, eh, dembot? Sad.

      Delete
    5. Sad is living in your parents basement, hitting the refresh button between looking at a picture of trump while jerking off.
      Punk.

      Delete
    6. Whoa, it does sound horrible, dear Punk. Much worse than what I imagined. Too bad you'll have to sit in that basement forever.

      Delete
    7. That's ok.
      You'll be dead.

      Delete
    8. He's already dead from the neck up.

      Delete
  10. "Quite literally, this deeply disordered, delusional man had been invoking the concept of miracles to wish the virus away."

    Gotta get the base to turnout.

    ReplyDelete
  11. At today's White House presser, Trump or Pence explained that a couple of states had taken major moves that led to a big increase in number of tests. Sure enough, today's reported nationwide number is 193,000 - a big jump from the 150,000 range. Birx and Virma, as well as Pence and Trump, have been taking a lot of actions that should lead to more testing. Hopefully today's result is part of a continuing trend.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Trump is finally on to something. Have every Republican drink Clorox and inject Lysol into their veins on a nationally televised broadcast.
      Who would't tune-in for that? The ratings would be through the roof.

      Delete
    2. David,
      Here's your chance to defend destroying public sector pensions because it's unfair public sector workers are getting less screwed for their labor as private sector workers.

      Delete
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