How strong does the Stelter Derangement Syndrome remain at the Media Research Center? Curtis Houck issued this Twitter/X post, linking to a Vanity Fair article: “LOL LOL LOL the Trump campaign denied Brian Stelter press credentials for a rally.” Houck expanded this into an April 20 post that’s only slightly less laden with petty partisan schadenfreude:
Charlotte Klein at Vanity Fair was upset that the Trump campaign is “cutting off access” to reporters who are extremely hostile to Trump, including Brian Stelter (also of Vanity Fair) and Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf, whose new book is titled Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy.
Klein protested the book “has been praised by two such members of that movement, Steve Bannon and John Fredericks, both of whom had Arnsdorf on their shows and recommended the book to their audiences.” That’s bizarre. By contrast, the Trump campaign took exception to the “End Democracy” hype.
Since February, Arnsdorf has not been permitted to enter campaign events as credentialed media. That doesn’t mean he can’t cover events. He just has to sit where regular folks do. Klein lamented “that requires getting to rallies much earlier, which could be a deal breaker for some journalists given their busy schedules.” Cry a river.
“Nobody has been denied any access to our events,” Cheung said in a statement. “If reporters want to cover our events but are unable to secure a coveted press badge, they are more than welcome to apply for general admission tickets in order to experience our events.”
If, say, the Biden campaign denied a right-wing reporter a press pass to an event, Houck and his MRC buddies would be screaming about “censorship” — there would be no “cry a river” huffiness. Rather than making quips about Trump’s inability to handle criticism, he is instead portraying he Trump campaign’s pettiness as a justifiable response to reporters who commit the offense of failing to be total Trump lackeys like himself.