The Media Research Center’s Curtis Houck gushed some more over his new favorite White House press secretary in an April 2 post:
Tuesday’s White House press briefing came nearly 24 hours before President Donald Trump’s alleged blockbuster tariffs against foreign countries around the globe, so the questions naturally skewed toward this issue and good-faith, legitimate questions for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt from Fox’s Peter Doocy and Edward Lawrence, NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer, NOTUS’s Jasmine Wright, and Politico’s Dasha Burns.
Houck made sure to work in his mancrush: “Fox’s Peter Doocy came next and again proved a change in administration didn’t mean he was going to let up in the difficulty of his questions.” Houck couldn’t be bothered to actually transcribe any of those supposedly difficult questions, however, instead choosing to embed video clips he had previously posted on his Twitter/X account.
Houck didn’t mention that Leavitt dodged questions about wrongly deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia — that would have interfered with his gushing, after all.
Houck ignored Leavitt’s April 8 briefing, where she fielded questions about the feud between Elon Musk and Peter Navarro and dubious claims that the iPhone will be made in America.
Rather than do a proper writeup of the April 15 briefing, Houck mocked concerns that biased right-wing reporters have been invited to ask questions:
The New York Times posted a hilarious meltdown Tuesday night complaining the Trump administration has “tak[en] steps to more closely control” the Brady Briefing Room. Their alleged crime against journalism? Instituting a “new media seat” to lead off the briefing and “[o]n average, a quarter of the people” called on “for questions are standing along the perimeter.”
In other words, those pesky conservative reporters — whom anonymous “longtime White House reporters” whined like bitter Mean Girls to The Times — are “erod[ing]” their power and “independence” and because they “rarely challenge the administration’s talking points,” they’ve “undercut the briefings as a space to relay accurate information to the American public and hold the president to account.”
[…]By their estimates, the four then kvetched she’s used a quarter of the time to call on reporters whose outlets lack permanent seats, citing The Daily Signal, The Daily Wire, Frontlines USA, Gateway Pundit, Lindell TV, One America News Network, and Real America’s Voice.
The Times implied giving these reporters the light of day to ask questions relevant to their audiences has made the Briefing Room less free and more partisan, as though The Times or whatever outlet April Ryan works for has their partisan stripes.
Houck didn’t deny the right-wing reporters are biased — but he did whine that the bias was pointed out:
Even though their analysis showed liberal networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN have been called on in every single Leavitt briefing, The Times was bothered by the fact that she’s also called on our friend Mary Margaret Olohan of the Daily Wire seven times and OANN’s Daniel Baldwin five times.
Why is this so awful? The Times explained it’s because they deliver “questions more favorable to the administration or have echoed right-wing talking points.”
Two words for The Times and these anonymous “longtime White House reporters”: Grow up.
Houck complained that the Times article “ended by whining Lindell TV’s Cara Castronuova used her question to ask about the SAVE Act, which would bolster voter integrity.” But he didn’t note that at the April 11 briefing — which Houck also ignored — Castronuova sucked up to Trump by claiming that he “looks healthier than ever before. I’m sure everybody in this room could agree.”
We’ve already documented how Houck used the April 22 briefing to complain about the “Maryland man hoax” in reference to Abrego Garcia, even though he is apparently the only one calling it that. He also touted how Leavitt was “spreading far and wide facts the liberal media have refused to properly spotlight on the meteoric fall of border crossings and then turning to Timcast’s Tim Pool for a question about the liberal media’s coddling of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.” But as a real media reporter pointed out, Pool’s question — which also used the “Maryland man hoax’ construct — was totally softball and merely teed up Leavitt to engage in some lame media-bashing.
Houck touted another right-wing reporter’s question at the April 28 briefing:
Perhaps to mess with them after White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD) weekend (aka the most self-righteous weekend of the year), White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and border czar Tom Homan dragged the press corps into the Brady Briefing Room Monday for an unusual morning press briefing emphasizing the administration’s rousing success of shutting down the border and deporting dangerous illegal immigrants.
But first and most notable here was Leavitt’s answer to a question from our friend and 2023 Media Research Center Bulldog Award winner, Mary Margaret Olohan from The Daily Wire. The question concerned Axios reporter Alex Thompson’s speech accepting an award at the WHCD touched on the legacy media’s (purposeful) failure to cover Joe Biden’s decline.
[…]Leavitt hit the nail on the head about the liberal media’s role in the pants-on-fire “deepfake videos” narrative surrounding Biden and that kind of behavior “contribute[d] to the decline in the trust that Americans have for legacy media” and “why we’ve made many changes to this briefing room in this White House.”
Houck once again gushed that Doocy “showed the change in administrations wouldn’t change the fierceness of his questions.”
However, he failed to disclose that Leavitt held a briefing later that day specifically for “new media” (read: pro-Trump online influencers, like the guy known on social media as “DC Draino”), who mostly asked fawning questions of Leavitt; one attendee merely asked for marching orders on what to cover while another ranted about the discredited “Clinton body count.”