When Donald Trump went to talk to the National Association of Black Journalists, the Media Research Center was in full partisan mode — both in defending Trump and attacking the journalists for daring to question him. In a pre-emptive defense, Alex Christy complained in a July 31 post that a CNN correspondent was “trying to make something of Trump’s appearance and was trying to ” gin up controversy” by pointing out how Trump has a history of insulting black journalists as stupid. Christy played the “he insults everyone” card: “Trump calls everyone stupid: man, woman, black, white, Democrat, Republican, politician, actor, journalist, Trump is an equal opportunist in that respect.”
Christy later reviewed the interview itself, again giving Trump a pass for being a jerk:
Donald Trump stopped by the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention in Chicago on Thursday for a lively on-stage interview that saw him label ABC “fake news” and get into arguments with moderators over Kamala Harris, JD Vance, and abortion.
ABC’s Rachel Scott did most of the questioning, and she led off by recalling, “You have told four congresswoman of color who, are American citizens, to go back to where they came from. You have used words like ‘animal’ and ‘rabbid’ to describe black attorneys. You attack black journalists, calling them ‘a loser’ saying the questions that they asked are, quote, “stupid and racist.” You’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So, my question, sir, now that you were asking black supporters to vote for you, why should black voters trust you after you have used language like that?”
Trump replied, “Well, of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so—in such a horrible manner. First question, you don’t even say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network.” He would go on to hype his record on things such as opportunity zones and education.
[…]It is also true that Trump calls just about everybody “stupid” or “loser.”
Just because Trump always does it doesn’t mean it’s acceptable behavior. Christy then cheered more partisan aggressiveness from Trump:
Trump turned the tables on Scott, “How do you define DEI?” Scott could only get tautological, “Diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
That’s like trying to determine whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich by claiming the definition of a sandwich is a sandwich. Scott, however, was just getting started. She also wondered about Vance’s childless cat lady comments, “Did you know that he had these views about people who do not have children before you picked to be your running mate and do you agree with him?”
Trump, naturally, defended Vance, “He is very family oriented and he thinks families are a great thing. That doesn’t mean he thinks that if you don’t have a family, it’s not—I know people with families. I know people with great families. I know people with very troubled families, and I also know people with no families. They didn’t meet the right person. Things happen. You go through life. You don’t meet the right person—”
Tim Graham served up his usual whining tone in his July 31 podcast:
Who would have thought Donald Trump would accept a tough gig at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, and Kamala Harris would not? Trump was hounded with vicious questions and yet the NABJ is erupting internally because Team Harris just couldn’t find any time for journalists, and Trump said sure, I’ll take you on.
My overwhelming sense here is there is Kamala Harris will never face hostile questions like this. There is no way she would ever be asked questions as rude as Trump received at an NABJ conference. She’s never going to accept an interview request from Fox or Newsmax or God forbid, conservative radio stars. The double standard is blatant and unforgettable.
[…]The journalists also pressed Trump about J.D. Vance’s comments about cat ladies, about abortion, and about promises to pardon some January 6 protesters. None of that was surprising. It’s like any other liberal-media interview list.
Why does Graham think it’s only a “liberal media” issue that Trump want to release convicted Capitol riot criminals who may go on to commit more crimes? He concluded with his usual whataboutism:
Since the 2020 campaign, we have witnessed the bizarre spectacle of Donald Trump granting wide access to networks that suggest he’s a fascist and racist and hammer him daily, while Biden and Harris won’t grant interviews to media outlets that gurgle all over them and their “historic accomplishments.” Either they think the press can never be servile enough or they are projecting a complete lack of confidence in their efforts to put complete sentences together.
Graham followed up the next day with an attack on any journalists who would not parrot his preferred right-wing talking points:
The big Trump news story on Wednesday night and Thursday morning was the intensely hostile grilling he received at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago. Unsurprisingly, the networks pounced on Trump’s trolling claims that Kamala Harris used to identify by an Indian heritage, and then decided she was black. Norah O’Donnell at CBS led like Dan Rather was scripting it:
Why was it biased to fact-check Trump, and why did Graham dismiss Trump’s insult of Harris’ heritage as “trolling”? Graham then asked, “But what did they omit?” His first two claims involved Harris, not Trump, then whined that Scott was “obnoxious” in questioning Trump without explaining what, exactly, was obnoxious about it beyond it not conforming to right-wing narratives, further huffing about her “pushy questions about Kamala Harris being a “DEI hire” as she refused to answer his question about what ‘DEI’ means” and denying that Trump was the one being “combative.”
NIcholas Fondacaro whined in his daily hate-watch of “The View”:
ABC’s The View might be the most popular day-time talk show, but they definitely don’t have the kind of influence moderator Whoopi Goldberg was trying to exercise on Thursday’s show when announced that former President Trump and Republicans were banned from the black community after his contentious sit-down with the National Association of Black Journalists.
“Listen, he did exactly what often Republicans bitch about, ‘you don’t invite me, you don’t want to listen.’ Well, we invited you and we heard you. And you can’t come back!” Goldberg proclaimed as the capstone to their reaction to the event. “And you blew it,” co-host Joy Behar agreed.
Fondacaro yet again falsely smeared co-host Sunny Hostin as “staunchly racist and anti-Semitic” as he bizarrely framed Trump’s weird insult of Harris as having suddenly “turned black” as her “playing different race cards depending on the situation” (which Trump said nothing about), then lashed out at her for purportedly “play[ing] her biracial card” and referencing her “lived experience”: “So, here’s the thing about relying on someone telling us about their ‘lived experience,’ there are paranoid schizophrenics out there that have very livid lived experiences that never actually happened.” No wonder Fondacaro didn’t see anything wrong with Trump’s smear of Harris.
Mark Finkelstein served up a somewhat less insulting take on the same subject in a post the same day, invoking the new right-wing “code-switching” code word to try and denigrate Harris: “It does remain to be seen whether Trump’s questioning of Kamala’s racial code-switching will work for him beyond the bounds of his base. It certainly excited the pro-Harris press.” Finkelstein didn’t explain why it was a bad thing for Harris to do what every politician does by appealing to a particular audience with arguments relevant to them.