MRC's Houck Ignores Leavitt's White House Pressers When She's On Defense -x

Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck was such an enthusiastically obsessive chronicler of White House press briefings during the Biden administration that it’s strange that he shows little interest in doing the same for Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt (unless it’s cheering how she slavishly sticks to her boss’ narrative du jour). We’ve shown how Houck ignored most of Leavitt’s press briefings in July, presumably because he could not perform sufficiently dutiful stenography of her. But he was in full gush mode in his writeup of Leavitt’s Aug. 19 presser:

On Tuesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt came locked and loaded to take on the America Last liberal media and blasted many of them for seeming to be rooting for President Trump to fail in not only bringing down crime in Washington D.C. by federalizing the police and bringing in National Guard troops, but also his moves to bring peace in eastern Europe by ending the war between Russia and Ukraine.

First, she went hard in the paint against the liberal media for Trump’s deep desire to see the war started by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine come to an end as an entire generation on both sides have been killed since it started in 2022 on Joe Biden’s watch:
[…]
Having made her positions (and the facts) clear to the liberal media, Leavitt opened up the Q&A with the “new media seat,” which went to Human Events senior editor and Real America’s Voice host Jack Posobiec:

Houck didn’t accurately identify Posobiec as a right-winger, let alone that he — by the MRC’s own definition — threatened President Biden’s life by tweeting “86 46.” He quickly moved on to gushing over another (unidentified) right-wing reporter: “Our friend and 2023 MRC Bulldog Award winner Mary Margaret Olohan of the Daily Wire followed up on something President Trump told Fox & Friends hours earlier about wanting to go to heaven:.”

Houck further slobbered over Olohan for advancing right-wing narratives in his writeup of Leavitt’s Aug. 28 press briefing:

During Thursday’s White House press briefing, our friend, 2023 MRC Bulldog Award winner, and Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan triggered former CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy plus the liberals at Mediaite for asking Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about “trans ideology” playing a role in the Wednesday’s Minneapolis Catholic school shooting by a transgender psychopath.

Olohan first asked about “consequences” for those who engage in what the left calls “gender-affirming” behavior and whose children, students, or patients go onto commit a crime such as, say, killing two children and injuring 20:
[…]
But what set them off was this second question:

OLOHAN: I’ve seen a lot of calls for action among these lawmakers saying that we shouldn’t just be praying. One that I’ve seen on the right, actually, is calls for the FBI to institute a new class of domestic terrorism that involves trans ideology. Is that something that the administration would support?

LEAVITT: I would have to check with the appropriate people on that.

This left Mediaite’s Ahmad Austin Jr. rather triggered, as evidenced by his piece “Pro-MAGA Reporter Asks Karoline Leavitt If FBI Is Looking at New Terror Designation ‘That Involves Trans Ideology’.”

Austin’s lazy article restated the headline as the lede and then did not even mention Olohan by name or her outlet until the fifth paragraph.

Neither Houck nor Olohan offered evidence that being transgender is, in fact, an “ideology,” which tells us she’s all about parroting partisan narratives and not at all about factual reporting. Instead, Houck went on to have a meltdown over Oliver Darcy highlighting Olohan’s ridiculous question:

Over at his newsletter site Status, Darcy threw a temper tantrum at Olohan, refusing to say her name. Instead, he said was just “a Daily Wire figure” who “shamefully…pressed press secretary Karoline Leavitt on whether the FBI should ‘institute a new class of domestic terrorism that involves trans ideology.’”

“The same individual asked if the administration would support such a move. Leavitt replied she would need to ‘check with the appropriate people,’” he added.

This, Darcy whined, was proof of “right-wing media turn[ing] up the anti-trans rhetoric, weaponizing the suspect’s gender identity against the entire community” and “fram[ing] the violence as proof that transgender people pose a public threat.”

Houck did not dispute the accuracy of anything Darcy wrote.

Because Houck is interested only in being a big part of Trump Regime Media, he won’t tell his readers about happenings (and right-wing sycophancy) at these pressers that don’t conform to the required narrtaive, as reported by Mediaite:

Perhaps most crucially, Houck censored that Trump creepily fawned over Leavitt in an Aug. 1 availability, in which he praised “that face” and “those lips, the way they move.”

Houck completely ignored all of Leavitt’s briefings in September, even though she held at least two. Thus, he suppressed these happenings, courtesy of Mediaite:

It’s clear that Leavitt spent a good portion of those briefings on defense — and Houck doesn’t want to hear her on defense, which is likely why he ignored them. That makes him a terrible “media researcher” — but a loyal and valued member of Trump Regime Media.

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