The Media Research Center hates it when Donald Trump’s actions are questioned — it’s as if everything he does, however sleazy, bizarre or illegal, must be above reproach. Curtis Houck demonstrated this again in an Oct. 15 post:
In contrast to ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS Mornings on Tuesday, NBC’s Today downplayed two lengthy stops for attendee medical emergencies cutting short a Monday townhall with former President Trump that became both a jamfest and chance for Trump to mingle with supporters. Instead, they touted it as a “bizarre” scene and chance for Vice President Harris to “rais[e] concerns about [his] fitness for office” and “mental acuity.”
Co-host Hoda Kotb immediately took it down the Harris team’s preferred narrative in an opening tease: “Trump’s rally derailed by two medical emergencies, turning it into a bizarre dance party…The Harris campaign using that to question the mental fitness of her opponent. Trump pushing back, raising his concerns about his rival.”
Moments later in setting up their 2024 coverage, Kotb got the closest anyone did the show’s two hours to explaining the truth: “And that Trump rally is making headlines after two people fainted after extreme heat inside the hall. The former President asked his campaign for music as first responders made sure they were okay. Trump staying on stage and continuing to play songs for the rest of the event.”
The focus changed a few minutes later with a segment by senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson buying the Harris team’s rancorous hypocrisy hook, line, and sinker with this as her chyron: “Dem Focus on Trump’s Mental Fitness.”
Co-host Savannah Guthrie put the ball on the tee, declaring “Harris is raising concerns about her opponent’s fitness for office” with Trump “launching personal attacks on her intelligence and cognitive ability.”
That led to Houck playing whataboutism:
She then went right back to suggesting something’s off in Trump’s health with gripes that his rallies contain “multiple asides…and run-ons” and touted an answer on child care to the Economic Club of New York to imply a lack of grip on reality.
She only said Trump has “defended his verbal gymnastics…as rhetorical flourishes.”
Missing? Any mention by Jackson of the many word salads Harris has tossed. Conveniently, our friends at the Free Beacon have documented 26 separate garbled messes in her vice presidency (as of this post).
Houck did not indicate whether the right-wing Free Beacon has ever documented Trump’s numerous garbled messes — you know, out of fairness.
Alex Christy similarly rushed to the defense of Trump later that day:
MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera welcomed former Democratic Rep. Max Rose to her Tuesday show to discuss Donald Trump turning a Monday town hall event into an impromptu dance session. For Rose, such an event is proof Trump has dementia.
After playing a clip of Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz saying Trump is a nearly 80-year old man who rambles in his speeches and refuses to release his medical records, Cabrera wondered, “It’s interesting because the age issue really damaged President Biden before he got out of the race. Could this attack line hurt Trump in the same way down this homestretch?”
[…]Cabrera gave credence to the idea that Trump dancing could be a sign something is wrong with him, “And the bottom line is we don’t know about his health, we don’t know about his mental health or physical health and the intricacies that are important to know for viewers and voters to know about whether he’s fit for presidency because he has not released those records.”
Trump dances at his rallies quite frequently and does so in a robotic manner that some may find cringey, but that he surely views it as part of his charm and as a way to soften his image. For months the media has made a big deal about how “fun” Kamala Harris’s rallies and good the “vibes” are but when Trump tries to have some improvised fun, they start talking about how he’s losing it.
Jorge Bonilla then shoehorned his criticism into his employer’s anti-media narrative:
NBC’s insistence on carrying water for the Regime very aptly demonstrates why trust in news media is at an all-time low. NBC insists on rehashing its much-derided earlier report that served no purpose except to further a particularly hypocritical Harris talking point.
[…]This report is Exhibit A in why Americans don’t trust the media. For the better part of the last five years, the Regime Media did everything in their power to conceal President Joe Biden’s glaringly obvious cognitive and physical decline. They looked the other way as Biden shook hands with air and glitched out behind podiums. They protected Biden until they could do so no more after the first presidential debate.
Now, in furtherance of his successor’s election campaign, they brazenly misrepresent events and attempt to gaslight the public. Vice President Harris is not an innocent bystander to any of this, either. Harris was the first person to come out and defend Biden’s faculties after the debate.
Bonilla curiously didn’t mention how Fox News concealed the truth about the lack of election fraud in 2020 — which his employer lazily handwaved as par for the course — or why that shouldn’t be a prime example of why Americans don’t trust the media. He followed that by even more lazily repeating Houck’s Harris whataboutism.
Tim Graham whined even more about this in his Oct. 16 podcast:
The networks were joining the Democrats in pouncing on a Trump town-hall meeting with supporters that was interrupted after several medical emergencies in the audience. So Trump just played songs for more than a half-hour. “Trump rally derailed,” proclaimed NBC, it was a “bizarre dance party.”
On MSNBC, Michael Steele ranted over the dance party: “This man cannot be the leader of the free world. He cannot articulate a vision for that world. He cannot — he cannot lay out a plan. He has concepts of plans. Now imagine if the current vice president of the United States got on a stage to say, ‘To hell with the questions. Why don’t we just sit here and listen to music?’ There would have been all kinds of racial memes about her, about her sex, about her ethnicity, and her being incompetent.”
That’s three posts and a podcast the MRC dedicated to aggressively defending Trump over this relatively minor matter. That’s quite the rehearsal for its upcoming role as Regime Media.