The Media Research Center was so happy about President Trump’s anti-media screeds during last week’s press conference that Curtis Houck and Scott Whitlock slapped together an item claiming to list “12 of the Top Trump Jabs at the Media in His Marathon Press Conference.“
Thing is, one of the “jabs” really wasn’t one — even Houck and Whitlock conceded it was just “eyebrow-raising.” That would be the exchange between Trump and reporter April Ryan, in which Trump asked the black reporter if she would set up a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus. Houck and Whitlock had no further comment beyond irrelevantly and baselessly claiming that Ryan is a “liberal reporter.”
Despite widespread criticism of Trump over the exchange for his apparent racial insensitivity, the MRC said nothing further about it. Given that the MRC is devoted to reflexively supporting Trump, that’s not exactly eyebrow-raising.
At the MRC’s “news” division CNSNews.com, it was a different story. Entertainer Charlie Daniels weighed in with his own alternative-facts explanation of what happened in a Feb. 17 column:
Reporter April Ryan asked the president if he intended to include the Black Congressional Caucus in his plans to help the inner cities. He replied that he’d been trying to set up a meeting with Elijah Cummings and that Cummings wouldn’t meet with him for political reasons, whereupon he said in tongue-in-cheek fashion “Would you like to set up a meeting?” It was an obvious facetious remark meaning, “I’ve tried, do you want to give it a shot?”
Daniels can’t actually know any of that, of course; he’s just spinning for Trump to clean up after him the way the rest of the MRC is.