The Media Research Center cheered President Trump’s temper tantrum that made him leave “Meet the Press” mid-interview — while, of course, denying it was such a thing, even though it would have applied the term had a Democrat done the same thing. Steve Malzberg was up first:
Last Friday, President Trump made time during his trip to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin for an extended sit-down interview with NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker, but was derailed several times by pounding rain on the roof of the facility, heated exchanges, and a premature ending as Trump abruptly walked out because he was tired of dealing with such a “crooked” network.
Welker pressed Trump on the war with Iran, and asked if he broke his promise of no new wars, which grew a bit confrontational.
[…]Things got even more heated during Welker’s questioning of Trump on his anti-weaponization fund.
[…]Trump then turned to the legitimacy of elections, specifically how slowly it has taken to count votes in California:
Welker told Trump (and, by extension, anyone else watching) to stop asking questions and refused to acknowledge the frustration: “That’s how they count the votes in California. State and local officials acknowledge they are slow…[T]hey’re urging the votes to be counted quickly. That’s how they vote in California!”
Trump replied amid Welker’s pushback with the obvious: “Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they’re nowhere close to picking a winner?”
Matters further devolved after the President said California officials are “crooked” and “the press is crooked,” Meet the Press included. Take notice of the allusion to negative network coverage, a homage to the work our Rich Noyes with his blockbuster negative Trump studies:
[…]Not sure what the rain had to do with Trump walking out. He made his feelings very clear. He said, Meet the Press is crooked.” Did they both acknowledge that?
Of course Trump would parrot the MRC in attacking “Meet the Press” — the MRC is Trump Regime Media, after all, and its articles are essentially right-wing talking points.
From there, the ball was in the court of the MRC’s nepo-baby chief doing a blitz of ranting on right-wing radio shows and podcasts. First:
Media Research Center President David Bozell joined Larry O’Connor on O’Connor & Company Monday morning to take aim at a total collapse in journalistic standards at NBC and CBS. Focusing on NBC’s Kristen Welker and former CBS anchor Scott Pelley, Bozell argued that the modern press corps is increasingly defined by double standards and open hostility toward the public.
During an interview with Donald Trump that aired on June 7, Kristen Welker repeatedly cut off the president, drawing sharp criticism for her combative tone. As Bozell pointed out, while Welker’s performance will likely earn her accolades from her peers, it highlighted a profound double standard in newsroom accountability. He pointed to Pelley, who was recently ousted by CBS News following reported confrontations with CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton, as proof of how unevenly corporate media doles out discipline.
On Monday afternoon, Media Research Center (MRC) President David Bozell joined Andrew Wilkow on The Wilkow Majority to rip into the glaring double standards, stale partisan groupthink, and blatant favoritism dominating today’s corporate media landscape.
[…]Unsurprisingly, the conversation exposed the massive disparity in how political figures are handled by network journalists. Bozell detailed how reporters like Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker openly complain about getting a full hour of access with a Republican president, while graciously giving Democratic figures a complete pass.
On the latest episode of the Wired In podcast, host Cabot Phillips spoke with Media Research Center President David Bozell to analyze the off-the-rails Scott Pelley’s New York Times podcast interview and President Donald Trump’s walkout on NBC’s Kristen Welker.
President Trump walked off the set of a weekend interview with Welker, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, following a heated exchange with moderator Kristen Welker regarding election integrity. During the segment, Trump criticized NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN, calling them “one-sided crooked networks.”
Bozell defended Trump’s decision to leave, arguing that legacy journalists routinely subject conservative figures to lopsided coverage, something Trump himself noted by citing MRC research. Bozell noted that the interview took place at a John Deere manufacturing facility immediately following a positive national jobs report, an achievement Bozell argued Welker largely ignored in favor of more adversarial questioning. He added that the media’s adversarial approach to Trump has driven public trust in news institutions to historic lows.
Not once did Bozell call Trump’s meltdown and walkout a “temper tantrum,” and not once did the hosts push back on Bozell’s defense of Trump.
Tim Graham devoted his June 10 column to defending Trump and lashing out further at Welker:
President Trump’s outbursts at the end of his Meet the Press interview, where he called Kristen Welker “crooked” and “stupid,” were treated as rude, even unglued. Somehow the offended Trump haters never seem to realize that they call Trump “crooked,” “stupid,” and worse about twice an hour on news programs.
One reason for Trump’s anger is he has granted access on an almost daily basis, unlike his predecessor. How many times did Meet the Press hosts Kristen Welker or Chuck Todd interview President Biden? Never. Todd interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris in 2022, and his idea of a tough question was “What is a semi-fascist?” (Biden had used that phrase for Republicans.) Todd also asked Harris “Would you call the border secure?” and accepted her Yes.
In this new interview with Trump, Welker began with a pretty standard NBC interview with Trump, respectful but strongly challenging his record. Trump called Welker “a big liberal” when she started prodding him for campaigning in 2024 on “no new wars.” Welker was right on the facts, and so was Trump: Welker’s as liberal as all the other “mainstream” media moderators on Sunday.
Trump talked about the “dirty cops” of the Biden administration and all of their prosecutions of Trump, his appointees, and his supporters: “What they did to the lives of people, they destroyed people. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong.”
Welker felt the need to claim “just to be very clear, there’s no evidence of what you’re saying.” There’s no evidence that anyone was ever sent to jail for doing nothing wrong? Trump didn’t add specifics, but replied: “There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence.” Welker replied: “Well, it’s not been presented in a court of law.”
Graham then tried to defend Trump’s lack of evidence:
Trump referred broadly not just to January 6, but the Russian collusion probes. She asserted there was “no evidence” that anyone was ever jailed or even damaged in all of the prosecutions and investigations. Biden’s Justice Department charged almost 1,600 people in association with January 6. How can Welker know what happened to all of those cases in courts of law? Has she ever tried? This is why the “no evidence” claim is infuriating. It sounds dismissively partisan.
Welker has probably never engaged with the case of Rebecca Lavrenz, known as the “praying grandma” of January 6. Lavrenz entered the Capitol and walked around for ten minutes. She wasn’t violent, carried no weapons, and caused no property damage. Biden’s prosecutors wanted ten months behind bars. Why?
She wasn’t put in jail, but in 2024, Judge Zia Faruqui sentenced Lavrenz to six months of home confinement and a $103,000 fine – based on her making “offensive” comments about the criminal justice system. These prosecutions and rulings suggested that Trump fans – “election deniers” — didn’t have the freedom of speech to criticize the Biden team. That feels like weaponized justice.
Burt even WorldNetDaily columnist has previously admitted that there is “no dispute as to what Rebecca did to earn these charges.” Lavrenz committed a crime — in her case, entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct inside a restricted building, disorderly conduct in the Capitol and parading or picketing in the Capitol — and it was captured on video.
Graham seems to have picked a poor example of “weaponized justice,” especially given that he couid not prove that’s what actually happened. He closed by whining (and playing equivocation):
Partisan journalists like Welker treat every assertion of Biden weaponizing the justice system as part of “The Big Lie,” melting into the rhetorical magma with 2020 election denial and praise for January 6 rioters. They reserve the accusations of “no evidence” or “without evidence” almost exclusively for Republicans. They didn’t tell Kamala Harris there was “no evidence” the border was secure. That would apparently be rude.
Graham forgets that he and his employer are such devoted members of Trump Regime Media the they bought into Trump’s election conspiracies and tried to defend the Capitol riot — without mentioning, of course, that the son of MRC founder and longtime president Brent Bozell was one of the rioters.