One side issue in the Media Research Center’s histrionics over the first presidential debate is that MRC writer Curtis Houck has been given numerous opportunities to whine about it on Fox News — presumably a reward for all the kneejerk defense of the channel the MRC has performed over the years. We’ve noted previous appearances by Houck in the weeks leading up to the debate, and there was one more pre-debate hit on June 24:
Making his second appearance in less than a week on the Fox News Channel’s Fox News @ Night, NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck ripped CNN for both its “arrogance” and “petulance” ahead of its Thursday night presidential debate as well as the legal trouble the network has found itself in with allegations of defamation (reported by our own Nick Fondacaro).
Houck and former longtime local news anchor Dee Sarton began with the viral outburst of CNN This Morning host Kasie Hunt abruptly ending her interview with lead Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt when the Trump aide merely pointed out former President Trump is heading into the debate against not only President Biden, but biased debate moderators.
[…]Houck concurred this was “shock[ing]” for even Leavitt to have seen considering “she was trying to move on…to the preparations of the former President for the debate” and Hunt was hung up on Leavitt (accurately) pointing out one of the moderators — Jake Tapper — had recently compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.
“And it just showed petulance, and it showed an arrogance from Kasie Hunt. She wasn’t around for the days of Jeff Zucker, but it really harkened back to those kinds of days of Jim Acosta in the briefing room and the like, making snarky commentaries. I think she defended her colleagues because, if she didn’t, she would have heard from Jake Tapper,” Houck added.
Unmentioned: Fox News would have likely treated the same way a liberal guest who pointed out the right-wing bias of the channel and its hosts. Indeed, Fox News forestalled that possibility by refusing to let a non-right-winger participate in this segment.
Houck returned to Fox News on July 1 to push his employer’s post-debate anti-Biden narrative:
NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck made his third appearance in as many weeks Monday on the Fox News Channel’s Fox News @ Night with Trace Gallagher and, alongside former Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, he blasted the liberal media for their wavering cowardice in the wake of President Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
Gallagher went first to Dixon, telling her the left and their media allies are “trying to gaslight us all over again” into thinking “you didn’t see what you saw” with Biden last week and “it wasn’t really that bad.”
[…]Houck said the overly prepared narrative “remind[ed]” him “of the liberal narrative that we hear all the time that, when liberal policies fail, it’s cause they care too much or they didn’t communicate well enough,” or “our ideas are great that people just don’t know what we’re doing.”
Houck added that, in Psaki’s case, she’s being a team player while also “thanking her lucky stars that she’s not the White House podium.” As for those still there, Houck noted that they must be appreciative since their jobs working for an elected Democrat is usually “the easiest job in politics,” but hasn’t thanks to Biden.
Needless to say, Houck is being a team player by pushing narratives he’s being paid to push, all of which are designed to benefit his preferred candidate, Donald Trump. Again, a non-right-winger was forbidden from participation in this segment. This was concluded by noting that “Houck wrapped with a prediction the liberal media will not only circle the wagons around Biden, but try to gaslight the American people into ignoring their moments of moral clarity.” Is that how Houck and his buddies try to gaslight the American people into ignoring their moments of moral clarity about Trump?
Houck served up more right-wing narrative-pushing in a July 8 appearance:
NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck both began and ended the week on the Fox News Channel’s Fox News @ Night with Friday’s installment featuring a lead-off panel discussion of President Biden’s ABC interview with Good Morning America co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos with the presidency in peril thanks to Biden’s cognitive decline.
Houck told fill-in host Mike Emanuel the answer to Stephanopoulos’s final question about whether he’d feel for democracy if Trump wins was “the answer that really concerns” liberal journalists and leftist allies “even more so than maybe some of the cognitive” answers “about him forgetting whether he watched the debate or not, or where he pauses mid-thought and he moves on.”
Houck also addressed Stephanopoulos questioning with some coming off as tough on paper, but his tone was softer:
[…]Our managing editor agreed with Republican strategist Matt Gorman’s take that it’s too late.
“It’s going to be hard to turn this boat around. These things should have happened last weekend after the debate. You know, the post-debate – or post interview discussion on ABC, the look of the four panelists, my colleague Jorge Bonilla tweeted that out, they looked like they were out of wake. That said it all,” he argued.
Of course Houck agreed with a Republican strategist — that’s what he’s there to do, in a right-wing safe space (where, yet again, no non-right-winger was allowed) where he will never be challenged on his ideological bias and how that warps his view of the media and will get his own partisan stenography reflected back at him for full safe-space effect.