In the midst of defending Donald Trump over his (fourth) indictment as well as the Republican presidential debate, the Media Research Center also had to deal with Trump skipping the debate to do an interview with disgraced ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. An Aug. 21 post by Nicholas Fondacaro was surprisingly critical of Trump for doing so, but it still complained that the snubbing was covered in non-right-wing media:
Showing disrespect for Republican primary voters, former President Trump announced Sunday night that he would not be attending the first Republican primary debate later in the week with reports suggesting he was planning to counterprogram the event with an interview with Tucker Carlson. ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Mornings welcomed the internal party drama on Monday as they hyped Trump’s attempt to upstage the GOP debate.
“Donald Trump has been back and forth on this. With just 48 hours to go, the former President clear he will not only skip the first Republican debate but even suggesting he might sit out future debates, too,” boasted senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott.
Fondacaro then tried to explain away a poll showing Trump with a huge lead over his Republican challengers:
In much the same way, CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil noted, “Donald Trump is saying he will not appear in the first Republican debate this week. And in fact, he may not appear in any of the debates during the Republican primary.”
Dokoupil proclaimed the findings of a new CBS News/YouGov poll “might help explain why” Trump decided to avoid facing his primary challengers. “Our survey found 62 percent of likely primary voters support Donald Trump. Governor Ron DeSantis is second, just 16 percent in his column. Others in single digits,” he claimed.
It’s worth noting that the margin of error was 5.7 percent. While the math might make it seem as though things were still pretty stable in terms of candidate positioning, the high MoE meant there was a fundamental problem in how the poll was conducted.
Given that the poll shows Trump ahead of his nearest challenger by 46 points, quibbling about the poll’s margin of error being roughly one-tenth of that is irrelevant.
Later that day, Fondacaro whined again that CNN noted that Trump was skipping the debate, bizarrely blaming CNN for reporting it (not Trump for skipping it),sniping at the channel under the headline “Ankle Biter”:
Chronically the third-place cable news outlet, CNN was the little goblin biting at the ankles of Fox News, the cable news giant. So, of course, it brought CNN great joy to see that former President Trump had chosen to avoid taking part in the first Republican presidential debate, which was hosted by their rival. Senior media correspondent Oliver Darcy beamed on Monday as he boasted about Trump’s absence possibly hurting Fox News’s ratings.
“In two days, Republican presidential hopefuls are set to take the stage in the first primary debate. This one’s in Milwaukee. But the front-runner, former President Trump, he will not be there,” announced co-host Victor Blackwell.
Blackwell also noted that Trump would be attempting to do some counter-programming. “Sources tell CNN the former President plans to sit down for an interview with former Fox host, Tucker Carlson instead. The interview is set to air on X, formerly known as Twitter, around the same time as the debate,” he added.
Being CNN’s toy-sized attack dog, Darcy yipped about how much Trump’s absence was supposedly going to hurt the first-place network:
The MRC irrationally hates Darcy because he escaped the right-wing media bubble and started doing actual journalism.
All was forgiven, though, when Trump spouted the MRC’s pet narratives during the Carlson interview, as Tim Kilcullen crowed in an after-interview post:
Former President Donald Trump touted an MRC poll that exposed Big Tech’s nefarious role in stealing the 2020 election through relentless censorship.
Trump didn’t mince words when talking with independent journalist Tucker Carlson about the Biden family laptop scandal, rampant Big Tech censorship and the infamous 2020 election Wednesday night. “By the way, you’re talking about cheating on the election?” Trump asked Carlson. “McLaughlin & Fabrizio—great pollsters—they said a thing like that, plus other things, meant anywhere from 10 to 17% of the vote would change.”
Commissioned by the MRC, the poll revealed that one in six voters (17%) for then-candidate Joe Biden would not have voted for the scandal-plagued career politician had they been made aware of his misconduct and Trump’s successes. 9.4 percent of those surveyed would have changed their vote based on the laptop scandal alone. The study surveyed 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states which would have gone for then-President Trump had Big Tech not censored these crucial stories.
Kilcullen didn’t mention that the MRC bought these polls from Trump’s own election pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, and a polling firm founded by former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, the Polling Company, to manufacture these polls, raising questions about their accuracy and bias. (And, yes, he called Carlson an “independent journalist” with a straight face.)
Kevin Tober followed that with a post promoting the “wildest moments” from the interview:
In the only newsworthy counterprogramming of the first GOP presidential debate Wednesday night, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed former President Donald Trump on his show “Tucker on X.” While the sitdown lasted over 46 minutes, there were a few wild moments that are sure to grab headlines.
“Why aren’t you at the Fox News debate tonight in Milwaukee?” Carlson asked Trump in his first question of the interview. In response, Trump explained that “a lot of people have been asking me that, and many people said you shouldn’t do them. But you see the polls that have come out and I’m leading by 50 and 60 points, and some of them are at one and zero, and two. And I’m saying do I sit there for an hour or two hours?”
“Whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people that shouldn’t even be running for President? Should I be doing that? And a network that isn’t particularly friendly to me, frankly they were backing Ron Desanctimonious like crazy and now they’ve given up on him. It’s a lost cause,” Trump explained.
The MRC’s DeSantis Defense Brigade was curiously absent, refusing to call out Trump for mocking their favorite candidate.
In an Aug. 24 post, Tober talked up the MRC’s favorite deadbeat dad defending his boss:
During a special edition of Meet the Press on NBC News Now, anchor Chuck Todd decided to ask Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller if former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump were embracing the idea of violent conflict during a sitdown chat between the two on Twitter. Miller didn’t take Todd’s biased questioning lying down and told Todd he was “framing it incorrectly” and that it was “an idiotic question.”
“I want to ask you about this questioning from Tucker Carlson. I guess sort of—talking up the idea of a violent—some sort of violent conflict over this campaign,” Todd proclaimed. “Is that something the former President is embracing?”
Miller told Todd the answer was no and that “I think you are framing it incorrectly.”
“Respectfully that’s an idiotic question to even go in,” Miller added.
Tober concluded by hyping that “As of publication, the video has over 107 million views” on Twitter — but censored the fact that Twitter’s view counter is utterly meaningless.
Tom Olohan served up his own post gushing over Trump spouting conservatively correct narratives during the interview:
Former President Donald Trump went after the reduced quality of life and narrowed choices that accompany environmentalist proposals hard last night.
Trump skipped the Republican primary debate Wednesday and sat down with podcast host Tucker Carlson on X to discuss the state of the race, election interference by Big Tech, and whether or not Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. During this discussion, Trump pointed out the threat environmentalists pose to the American way of life and how he dealt with that during his presidency. After making clear that the left wants to limit our choices, Trump said, “The new thing is your heating systems in the house. They don’t want you to have a modern day heating system. They want you to use a heating system that will cost you at least $10,000 to buy and won’t work very well. You know, none of this stuff works as well.”
[…]Finally, Trump broke down how he confronted the Environmental Protection Agency over regulations negatively affecting Americans’ way of life. In particular, Trump referenced restrictions on water usage for showers, washing machines, sinks, and dishwashers, saying that “and I voided all of that,” while discussing the damage done by the regulation.
Olohan didn’t say how much Trump paid him for this campaign ad.