Perhaps the Media Research Center isn’t quite as solidly behind Donald Trump as we thought.
The MRC’s “news” division, CNSNews.com, was in full spin mode on Ted Cruz’s poorly received speech at the Republican National Convention, in which he pointedly refused to endorse nominee Donald Trump and was booed off the stage by RNC delegates. CNS’ Susan Jones spun that Cruz’s “powerful speech” was “well-received until the very end, when it became clear he would not endorse Donald Trump.” Jones then went into full stenography mode, summarizing the speech and not mentioning the boos again until the 21st paragraph of her article.
Jones followed up with an article reciting Cruz’s defense of his speech — which curiously omitted any criticism of it by his fellow conservatives — and uncritically quoted Cruz blaming the media for the controversy over it.
Meanwhile, at the side of the MRC that doesn’t pretend to be a “news” organization, they were going after anyone who criticized Cruz’s speech — well, anyone who wasn’t a prominent conservative or who regularly appears on Fox News (Charles Krauthammer, for example). Frequent MRC target Chris Matthews got bashed again, with Scott Whitlock insisting that his “unhinged” criticism was “more about his hatred for Cruz and less about righteous indignation in how the Republican treated Donald Trump.”
Conservative political analyst Nicolle Wallace (on NBC) “melodramatically ranted” about Cruz, Kyle Drennen declared. And Nicholas Fondacaro even went after a Trump surrogate (on CNN) who “couldn’t seem to control his emotions as he let loose a stream of insults towards Cruz.”
This is the same MRC, by the way, that has had no comment whatsoever about CNN’s ethically questionable hiring of fired Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, even though such a thing should be in the MRC’s bailiwick given that CNN is part of the hated “liberal media.”
Remember that MRC chief Brent Bozell endorsed Cruz and denounced Trump during the primary process, and as recently as last month was still working behind the scenes to help plot Cruz’s political future. One has to wonder if MRC’s Cruz defense was ordered straight from the top as a passive-aggressive needling of Trump — and whether Cruz’s RNC speech itself was at least partly the work of Bozell and his secret Cruz cabal.