The occurrence of President Trump’s 100 days in office prompted the usual complaints at the Media Research Center that non-right-wing media were not sufficiently laudatory of him. But first, an attempt at ball-spiking by Jorge Bonilla in an April 29 post:
Shortly after I began live-tweeting the ABC exclusive interview between correspondent Terry Moran and President Donald Trump, a commenter questioned why the president would put himself up to the scrutiny of the “legacy media”. The response should be clear as day to anyone who sat through the interview, as we did so you wouldn’t have to. Trump simply likes to, and enjoys the sparring. In most cases, certainly today, the same can’t be said for the interviewer.
Unfortunately for him, one of the examples of Moran supposedly getting destroyed (per the headline) by Trump chosen by Bonilla was this:
While arguing on behalf of MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia (KAG), Moran inexplicably asserts that the tattoos on his hand were photoshops:
[…]Photoshop. That exchange will live in infamy and will haunt Moran for a very long time.
Moran tries to shift to Ukraine, but finds himself on the back foot over KAG, tattoos again.
But the photo of Kilmar Garcia’s tattoos was, in fact, doctored through an “MS13” superimposed on his knuckles, which Trump insisted were the actual tattoos. Bonilla failed to tell his readers that relevant fact.
The requisite complaining started in earnest in Nicholas Fondacaro’s daily hate-watch of “The View” on April 29:
Tuesday marked 100 days of President Trump’s second term and the liberal ladies of ABC’s The View were ecstatic by his historically low approval numbers, so much so that even well-known poll skeptic Whoopi Goldberg touted them. But even the poll numbers weren’t enough to quell their fearmongering warnings that Trump “will come for you” if you speak out against him.
“It is the 100th day, I know it doesn’t feel like 100 days, it feels like 100 years!” Goldberg exclaimed. “Now, yesterday he lashed out on social media over reports that he has the lowest approval numbers of any president in the last seven decades.”
[…]Pretend independent Sara Haines said she should could barely remember much of the first 100 days, blaming it on how Trump had “flooded the zone.” “I can’t really remember a month ago with some of the things we dealt with over time, but I think we learned all we needed to know about this presidency in the first hours after he became president with the pardons of the January 6 insurrectionists,” she huffed.
Fondacaro did not dispute that Trump’s pardons let the Capitol rioters he incited to escape full accountability for their crimes.
Curtis Houck complained further in an April 30 post:
The liberal media greeted President Trump’s 100-day mark Tuesday with a torrent of negative coverage, so it was no surprise when CBS used both of its evening news shows — CBS Evening News and CBS Evening News Plus — to nearly go wall-to-wall in spewing disgust at the Trump administration, almost trying to conjure up a recession and economic ruin.
It started from the get-go with a pot-shot from Evening News co-anchor Maurice DuBois: “President Trump’s first 100 days have been largely about the trade deal, and, so far, there’s been more wheeling than dealing, especially with China.”
[…]Co-anchor John Dickerson then reminisced about marking the first 100 days of the first Trump term with the President in Pennsylvania, but that too was negative with tariffs being the frame of reference: “[I]n 2017, he touted the National Association of Manufacturers, who were so optimistic about what he’s doing. If you look at their publications now, they’re worried about these tariffs And the other thing is that the Ames True Temper plant, the factory is closed And Bloomberg reports that it appears their products are now made in China.”
[…]The Trump hate finally came to a close with a lengthy, softball-filled interview with the National Urban League’s Marc Morial, who came loaded for bear and still livid the race hustler industry’s beloved Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs are going down the drain.
Because CBS News doesn’t take ethics seriously, it refused to disclose Morial is a deep, personal friend of CBS News given his wife is longtime CBS News personality and current CBS Saturday Morning co-host Michelle Miller.
If this were Fox News, you bet the so-called media writers out there would be having a conniption.
Oddly, Houck did not tell us how, exactly, Fox News covered the 100-day milestone. Meanwhile, Clay Waters groused the same day about a different network:
Public television marked President Trump’s first 100 days in office with a dose of fear and loathing Monday evening, courtesy of the PBS News Hour’s most liberal reporter Laura Barron-Lopez and her guest, hostile presidential historian Mark Updegrove.
[…]Updegrove is hardly an objective voice. In 2022 he appeared on ABC News coverage of then-President Biden’s speech marking the anniversary of the January 6 Capitol Hill riot: “Joe Biden needed to deliver a powerful statement about democracy today. This was FDR after Pearl Harbor. This is Lyndon Johnson after Selma. This is George W. Bush after 9/11.”
Tim Graham whined in his April 30 podcast:
At the 100-day mark in President Trump’s second term, it’s apparent once again that the evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC are organized to cover Trump as negatively as possible. A new NewsBusters study finds coverage of Trump has been 92 percent negative. Four years ago, Biden coverage was 59 percent positive. Rich Noyes explains the difference.
Keep in mind that the amount of Trump coverage — 899 stories making up 1,716 minutes — translates into more voluminous negative coverage. Biden drew only 726 minutes in 2021. Trump has granted much broader access to the press — and it looks like he has been punished for it. Biden did not suffer for hiding away from the press.
Graham didn’t explain why the coverage roundup ignored Fox News.
Alex Christy was in comedy-cop mode in a May 1 post:
Former White House Press Secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki joined CBS’s Stephen Colbert on The Late Show on Wednesday for three segments full of loathing President Trump and his “fire hose of dirty water” and “do-nothing Democrats” like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Colbert quipped, “Let’s talk about just yesterday was Trump’s 100th day in office; how did you celebrate?”
Psaki mourned, “I mean, I just covered my eyes, pretended it never happened. No, I did not do that. Look, I, most days, I don’t know if you feel this way, I know that you are a big observer of the news, explainer of the news, most of the time I feel like I am drinking from a fire hose of dirty water. Like, I feel, so overwhelming and the last 100 days have felt that way.”
Christy didn’t rebut anything they said.