The MRC Vs. Black Journalists
When Donald Trump talked with a group of black journalists, the Media Research Center insisted they deserved his hostility -- then whined that the journalists were too nice to Kamala Harris.
When Donald Trump went to talk to the National Association of Black Journalists, the Media Research Center was in full partisan mode — both in defending Trump and attacking the journalists for daring to question him. In a pre-emptive defense, Alex Christy complained in a July 31 post that a CNN correspondent was “trying to make something of Trump’s appearance and was trying to ” gin up controversy” by pointing out how Trump has a history of insulting black journalists as stupid. Christy played the “he insults everyone” card: “Trump calls everyone stupid: man, woman, black, white, Democrat, Republican, politician, actor, journalist, Trump is an equal opportunist in that respect.”
Christy later reviewed the interview itself, again giving Trump a pass for being a jerk:
Donald Trump stopped by the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention in Chicago on Thursday for a lively on-stage interview that saw him label ABC “fake news” and get into arguments with moderators over Kamala Harris, JD Vance, and abortion.
ABC’s Rachel Scott did most of the questioning, and she led off by recalling, “You have told four congresswoman of color who, are American citizens, to go back to where they came from. You have used words like ‘animal’ and ‘rabbid’ to describe black attorneys. You attack black journalists, calling them ‘a loser’ saying the questions that they asked are, quote, “stupid and racist.” You’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So, my question, sir, now that you were asking black supporters to vote for you, why should black voters trust you after you have used language like that?”
Trump replied, “Well, of all, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so—in such a horrible manner. First question, you don’t even say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network.” He would go on to hype his record on things such as opportunity zones and education.
[…]
It is also true that Trump calls just about everybody “stupid” or “loser.”
Just because Trump always does it doesn’t mean it’s acceptable behavior. Christy then cheered more partisan aggressiveness from Trump:
Trump turned the tables on Scott, “How do you define DEI?” Scott could only get tautological, “Diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
That’s like trying to determine whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich by claiming the definition of a sandwich is a sandwich. Scott, however, was just getting started. She also wondered about Vance’s childless cat lady comments, “Did you know that he had these views about people who do not have children before you picked to be your running mate and do you agree with him?”
Trump, naturally, defended Vance, “He is very family oriented and he thinks families are a great thing. That doesn’t mean he thinks that if you don’t have a family, it’s not—I know people with families. I know people with great families. I know people with very troubled families, and I also know people with no families. They didn’t meet the right person. Things happen. You go through life. You don’t meet the right person—”
Tim Graham served up his usual whining tone in his July 31 podcast:
Who would have thought Donald Trump would accept a tough gig at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, and Kamala Harris would not? Trump was hounded with vicious questions and yet the NABJ is erupting internally because Team Harris just couldn’t find any time for journalists, and Trump said sure, I’ll take you on.
My overwhelming sense here is there is Kamala Harris will never face hostile questions like this. There is no way she would ever be asked questions as rude as Trump received at an NABJ conference. She’s never going to accept an interview request from Fox or Newsmax or God forbid, conservative radio stars. The double standard is blatant and unforgettable.
[…]
The journalists also pressed Trump about J.D. Vance’s comments about cat ladies, about abortion, and about promises to pardon some January 6 protesters. None of that was surprising. It’s like any other liberal-media interview list.
Why does Graham think it’s only a “liberal media” issue that Trump want to release convicted Capitol riot criminals who may go on to commit more crimes? He concluded with his usual whataboutism:
Since the 2020 campaign, we have witnessed the bizarre spectacle of Donald Trump granting wide access to networks that suggest he’s a fascist and racist and hammer him daily, while Biden and Harris won’t grant interviews to media outlets that gurgle all over them and their “historic accomplishments.” Either they think the press can never be servile enough or they are projecting a complete lack of confidence in their efforts to put complete sentences together.
Graham followed up the next day with an attack on any journalists who would not parrot his preferred right-wing talking points:
The big Trump news story on Wednesday night and Thursday morning was the intensely hostile grilling he received at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago. Unsurprisingly, the networks pounced on Trump’s trolling claims that Kamala Harris used to identify by an Indian heritage, and then decided she was black. Norah O’Donnell at CBS led like Dan Rather was scripting it:
Why was it biased to fact-check Trump, and why did Graham dismiss Trump’s insult of Harris’ heritage as “trolling”? Graham then asked, “But what did they omit?” His first two claims involved Harris, not Trump, then whined that Scott was “obnoxious” in questioning Trump without explaining what, exactly, was obnoxious about it beyond it not conforming to right-wing narratives, further huffing about her “pushy questions about Kamala Harris being a “DEI hire” as she refused to answer his question about what ‘DEI’ means” and denying that Trump was the one being “combative.”
Nicholas Fondacaro whined in his daily hate-watch of “The View”:
ABC’s The View might be the most popular day-time talk show, but they definitely don’t have the kind of influence moderator Whoopi Goldberg was trying to exercise on Thursday’s show when announced that former President Trump and Republicans were banned from the black community after his contentious sit-down with the National Association of Black Journalists.
“Listen, he did exactly what often Republicans bitch about, ‘you don’t invite me, you don’t want to listen.’ Well, we invited you and we heard you. And you can’t come back!” Goldberg proclaimed as the capstone to their reaction to the event. “And you blew it,” co-host Joy Behar agreed.
Fondacaro yet again falsely smeared co-host Sunny Hostin as “staunchly racist and anti-Semitic” as he bizarrely framed Trump’s weird insult of Harris as having suddenly “turned black” as her “playing different race cards depending on the situation” (which Trump said nothing about), then lashed out at her for purportedly “play[ing] her biracial card” and referencing her “lived experience”: “So, here’s the thing about relying on someone telling us about their ‘lived experience,’ there are paranoid schizophrenics out there that have very livid lived experiences that never actually happened.” No wonder Fondacaro didn’t see anything wrong with Trump’s smear of Harris.
Mark Finkelstein served up a somewhat less insulting take on the same subject in a post the same day, invoking the new right-wing “code-switching” code word to try and denigrate Harris: “It does remain to be seen whether Trump’s questioning of Kamala’s racial code-switching will work for him beyond the bounds of his base. It certainly excited the pro-Harris press.” Finkelstein didn’t explain why it was a bad thing for Harris to do what every politician does by appealing to a particular audience with arguments relevant to them.
Michael Wnek took his shot at it in an Aug. 1 post:
On Wednesday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The ReidOut, host Joy Reid wasted no time in dissecting former President Donald Trump’s interview at the National Association of Black Journalists. She and MSNBC contributor April Ryan pounced on Trump for “the visual depiction of a dumpster fire,” while aggressively defending Vice President Kamala Harris.
[…]
Later in the segment, Ryan expressed her outrage at Trump’s participation at the convention in the first place, wondering, “What was this for? Was this for showing clout? Was this really for journalism’s sake? Or was this just to pop ya collar, ‘I can get a presidential candidate?’” This oddly contradicted her very first statement when she stated, “Well, first of all, the NABJ, an advocacy group for black journalists, the black press, extends invitations every election cycle to presidential candidates.”
Well, Trump happened to be a presidential candidate who accepted the invitation while Harris skipped out on it.
Sarah Butler groused that Trump’s whining about the questions he was asked was called out:
Taxpayer-funded National Public Radio did not enjoy former President Donald Trump’s performance at the National Association of Black Journalists. On All Things Considered, co-host Ailsa Chang interviewed Kadia Goba of Semafor.com, one of the three moderators from NABJ, who described the night as “unsettling” and “hostile.” NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez later described the event as “kind of nuts all the time.”
Chang began by asking Goba what stood out to her from the Q&A with Trump. Goba answered “I was very surprised at the vitriol at the very beginning. It was quite unsettling and kind of set the tone for a very aggressive panel.”
Chang played a soundbite from the NABJ where “Trump was almost immediately critical” of Rachel Scott’s first question. In the recording, Trump said “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so – in such a horrible manner.”
What Chang did not put on air was Scott’s opening question prior to his response where she uncorked a litany of his allegedly racist treatment of political competitors and radical-left Congresswomen, and his name-calling of liberal reporters.
Butler did not deny that complaints about Trump’s “racist treatment” and name-calling was inaccurate. She continued:
Chang brought up the live-fact checking during the NABJ because “he did make a number of false statements.” One of Chang’s examples was when Trump said “millions of criminals are crossing the Southern border into the U.S.”
Chang shared a statement from the Kamala Harris campaign that said “Donald Trump has already proven he cannot unite America, so he attempts to divide us.” Goba exclaimed that the vice president is “factually correct” and that she herself “did not expect the personal attacks at all.”
On Thursday’s Morning Edition, co-host Leila Fadel brought in NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez. She described Trump’s invitation to speak at the NABJ as “controversial – because of the things he’s said and done.” Ordoñez agreed that it was “very controversial” and professed that Trump “sparred” with moderators.
To Ordoñez, the event was “really kind of nuts all the time.” He added that “Trump has a history of promoting racist birther conspiracy theories” targeting Harris and Barack Obama. Unsurprisingly, Fadel agreed saying “Right and what he’s saying there isn’t actually true” about Harris’s racial identity.
Butler wouldn’t repeat what Trump actually said about Harris’ racial identity.
Curtis Houck found a right-wing commentator to push his preferred narratives and spin about the event:
On Thursday’s The Faulkner Focus, Fox News host Harris Faulkner offered her first public reactions to the wild National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Convention panel she participated in that was hijacked by far-left reporters Rachel Scott of ABC and Kadia Goba of Semafor sparring with former President Trump.
Faulkner didn’t mention them by name, but she didn’t have to in voicing her displeasure with how it went:
Well, she’s a right-winger — which Houck did not point out — so of course she would be displeased that it wasn’t her preferred Trump lovefest. He also failed to state exactly what Trump said about Harris’ racial identity, but complained anyway that it was called out:
After noting the evasiveness from Vice President Harris’s team and soundbites of both Harris and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denouncing Trump’s comments at the panel about Harris’s racial identity.
Moments after Faulkner uttered a “wow”, she brought in Trump 2024 campaign official Caroline Sunshine, who thanked her for “actually doing your job as a journalist rather than deciding to play commentator like the other woman on that stage, who should have honored her profession but instead took the opportunity to play commentator, which was a disservice to that audience.”
Sunshine went onto say Trump sparring with Scott “was a master class…in how you fight, fight, fight and tell the truth and yet another textbook case study in how the mainstream media’s liberal bias plays out.”
Jeffrey Lord grumbled in his Aug. 3 column that the Washington Post called “absurd” Trump’s claim that he “saved” historically black colleges and universities, citing an Associated Press article noting an increase in HBCU funding under Trump, adding “There it is: a fact in black and white. … He wasn’t alone in saving funding, but he did.” Actual education experts point out, however, that while HBCU funding did increase under Trump, he exaggerated his role.
When a reporter questioned Trump’s claim that he has done more for black people than Abraham Lincoln by referencing “President Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act,” Lord responded by bringing up Lyndon Johnson’s segregationist record before he became president — which nobody was referring to. He went on to insist that Trump “has never once expressed opposition to voting rights of black Americans” and “was honored for his support of civil rights by none other than the Rev. Jesse Jackson.”
Interview with Harris
After aggressively defending Trump’s hostility toward the NABJ for asking Trump questions even though asking questions is what journalists do, the MRC unsurprisingly couldn’t handle it when Kamala Harris appeared before the NABJ, in which she acted much more respectful and got respect in return. Christy groused in a Sept. 17 post:
When Donald Trump sat down with the National Association of Black Journalists on July 31, the tone was combative and those interviewing him insisted on doing live fact-checking. On Tuesday, it was Kamala Harris’s turn for a much softer interview that saw the on-the-spot fact-checking go away despite multiple factually incorrect statements and be replaced with questions about how the GOP has “weaponized” her laughter.
Politico White House correspondent Eugene Daniels kicked off a series of softballs where he invited Harris to explain why, in her opinion, voters are better off than they were four years ago.
NPR Fresh Air host Tonya Mosley followed up with another softball, “What plans will you propose to guarantee that families can actually afford childcare and elder care?”
[…]
Throughout, Harris gave long-winded answers, and after she claimed “no working family should pay more than 7% of their income in childcare,” TheGrio White House correspondent Gerren Keith Gaynor invited her to simply give a stump speech, “What is your message to young black male voters who feel left out of this economy and how can your economic policies materially change your lives?”
When the tough questions began, they were from the left, as Mosley asked about Gaza, “Where do you see the line between aggression and defense and our power as Israel’s ally to do something?”
After Harris replied with typical liberal clichés about a two-state solution, Mosley tried again, “What levers does the U.S. have to support Palestinians in their right to self-determination? And is it even possible as Israel’s ally?”
For her part, Harris hyped the administration’s desire that “there be no reoccupation of Gaza, that there be no changing of the territorial lines in Gaza.”
Christy whined that Harris didn’t face fact-checks the way Trump did (while not identifying anything that needed to be fact-checked):
Switching gears, Gaynor asked about a proposal to create a reparations commission, “Would you as president take executive action to create this [reparations] commission?”
Harris danced around the specific issue, but said, “We just need to speak truth about history in spite of the fact some people are trying to erase history and trying to teach our children otherwise.”
There was no fact-check of that from the stage. Ultimately, Harris would say Congress should tackle the issue.
[…]
Also avoiding a fact-check was Harris’s statement on JD Vance, Springfield, and bomb threats, “When you have that kind of microphone in front of you, you really ought to understand at a very deep level how much your words have meaning.”
Christy didn’t identify what exactly needed to be fact-checked here — Vance indisputably lied about Springfield, and people were indisputably threatened by bomb threats and didn’t know the source of them at the time.
The next day, Christy devoted an entire post to complaining that Harris wasn’t fact-checked like Trump (while not identifying any Trump-level falsehoods and offering only right-wing boilerplate instead):
During Vice President Kamala Harris’s interview session with the National Association of Black Journalists, on-stage fact-checking was nonexistent, but PolitiFact assigned itself to do the task online. Unfortunately, the difference between PolitiFact’s treatment of Harris’s NABJ appearance and Trump’s was just as stark as the candidates’ appearances themselves.
Back in July, PolitiFact gave Trump one half-true, two mostly false, five false, and two pants on fire ratings. That’s zero on the true side, one in the middle, and nine on the false side. Harris, meanwhile, received two true, three mostly true, one half-true, and one false rating. That’s a total of five statements on the right, one in the middle, and one on the wrong side of the truth-o-meter.
The typical defense to such lopsided results is to simply say that Trump gets more false ratings because he spreads more falsehoods, but there were at least three significant statements from Harris that deserved to be on the false side in addition to her claim that unemployment was at its highest point since the Great Depression when she and Biden took office.
During the part of the discussion on whether Harris would use executive action to create a commission to study reparations, she declared, “We just need to speak truth about history in spite of the fact some people are trying to erase history and trying to teach our children otherwise.”
Fact-check: Nobody is trying to erase history. Not subscribing to The 1619 Project’s factually challenged view of history is not “trying to erase” it.
On the situation regarding bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio, Harris claimed, “A whole community put in fear… When you have that kind of microphone in front of you, you really ought to understand at a very deep level how much your words have meaning.”
Fact-check: Gov. Mike DeWine, who has fiercely condemned the rumor that Haitian migrants are eating people’s pets, claimed, “We have people unfortunately overseas who are taking these actions. Some of them are coming from one particular country.”
Christy conveniently failed to mention that it is Vance — his preferred vice presidential candidate — who has been spreading that “rumor,” though the MRC has actually defended Vance spreading the lie because it boosts right-wing anti-immigrant narratives. And, again, the targets of those threats had no way of knowing they were made by “overseas” people when they were made. Christy further groused:
For the final question of the session, Harris was asked if she has faith in the Secret Service in the aftermath of the second assassination attempt against Trump. Harris replied that she does, but claimed to be concerned for people without Secret Service protection, including for LGBT people in Florida with their “Don’t Say Gay” laws.
Fact-check: It is not illegal to say “gay” in Florida or any other state. They merely ensure that all classroom instruction is age-appropriate.
We remember that Christy’s MRC repeatedly described the Florida law as an “anti-grooming” bill despite the fact that the word appears nowhere in it, and that any reference to the existence to LGBTQ people was effectively deemed not to be “age-appropriate.”
Another post by Christy that day lashed out at a black journalist for her question of Harris he didn’t like:
During Tuesday’s interview with Kamala Harris at the National Association of Black Journalists, TheGrio White House correspondent Gerren Keith Gaynor lobbed the softest of softballs when he asked Harris what she made of the idea that “Republicans have at times weaponized you laughing in campaign ads.” Later, Gaynor would join MSNBC’s The ReidOut and admit he did it to boost the Harris campaign.
Gaynor also asked, “Why is joy important to you to insert into this election, and what do you make of Republicans using that as a way to suggest you’re not a series candidate?”
With that all as background, host Joy Reid inquired, “Gerren, why did you ask that question?”
Gaynor responded that, “it was important for me to ask that question because one, I noticed in doing my research for this interview, the vice president had been using the joyful warrior term even years before she was vice president. She did an interview with Ellen DeGeneres and she described herself as a joyful warrior. And this is obviously a theme of the Harris-Walz campaign that I think is resonating with voters.”
He also claimed to observe how, “on the Republican side, they have been using, Joy, her laughing, and using that as a tool to suggest that she’s not a serious candidate, particularly as a black woman, and the implications that that might give to voters. It was important for me to lift that up. And who doesn’t love joy, Joy?”
That is what was important? Her “joy” and kooky accusations of racism?
Graham whined about the interview in his Sept. 18 podcast:
The National Association of Black Journalists hosted an oh-so-polite sitdown with Kamala Harris on Tuesday, which displayed a dramatic double standard compared to the savaging of Donald Trump at the NABJ convention in July. The NABJ is a liberal interest group, like the NAACP.
Harris skipped out on their convention, but promised to come back later. It’s obvious that her team didn’t want her showing up to the same event, even if they weren’t ever going to be on stage with Trump at the same time.
As we suggested in July, Harris will never face hostile questions like Trump does. There is no way she would ever be asked questions as rude as Trump received from her pals at the NABJ. She’s never going to accept an interview request from Fox or Newsmax or God forbid, conservative radio stars. The double standard here is blatant and unforgettable, just as it was at the ABC debate.
Harris was never “fact checked” by her questioners, and the “live” checks from PolitiFact had one “False” and everything else was True, Fine, and Dandy. Liberal Democrats are presumed to be telling the truth about 80 percent of the time and the other 20 percent are “well, their heart is in the right place.”
Graham reworked that whining into his Sept. 20 column:
The easiest thing in the world to predict is that Kamala Harris is going to be cuddled by minority journalists. If you speak the mantra “diversity, equity, inclusion” – and let’s add “history” – you’re rooting for a Harris victory.
So when Harris finally consented to a sit-down with three liberals at a Philadelphia NPR station for the National Association of Black Journalists, the title of the event could have been “You Had Me at Hello.” Not every question was a softball – they pushed back from the left on handgun control and denying aid to Israel. But nobody wanted her chances of victory to be damaged in any way.
Unsurprisingly, Graham rehashed his employer’s complaints about Trump’s hostility getting called out:
Politico reporter Eugene Daniels – whose official beat has been championing the vice president for the last four years – opened the lovefest by asking the simple question about whether the American people are better off after four years. She responded by uncorking outrageous claims – that we had record-high unemployment when they assumed office (wrong) and that January 6 was the most terrible attack on our democracy since the Civil War. It’s like 9/11 never happened.
There was no pushback. This was a shocking contrast with Donald Trump’s NABJ interview at their convention in July, where ABC reporter Rachel Scott began with a vicious stemwinder about how many black journalists thought Trump shouldn’t be allowed at their convention, how he disparaged black Democrats like Ilhan Omar and insulted black journalists for “stupid” questions, and that he had dinner with a white supremacist (Nick Fuentes). Kanye West brought Fuentes, who was not invited, but Trump said he didn’t know who he was at the time.
Scott followed up by not asking, but telling Trump he should get his fellow Republicans to stop attacking her favorite candidate Harris as a “DEI hire.” They see this as a slur on Harris’s talents. They can’t admit that many Democrats demanded Biden install a black woman on the ticket – which sounds exactly like a DEI imperative.
Kamala Harris will never face hostile questions like this. There is no way she would ever be asked questions as rude as Trump received from Scott. She’s never going to accept an interview request from Fox or Newsmax or God forbid, conservative radio stars. The double standard is blatant and unforgettable. She’s not even interested in interviews from her most obvious allies, like the corrupt debate moderators at ABC.
Fox host Harris Faulkner was one of the three questioners at the Trump NABJ event. Why couldn’t they balance it out and have Faulkner also ask questions of Harris?
Is Graham admitting that Faulkner is a biased reporter? We thought Graham believed that right-wing media bias didn’t exist.
Graham concluded by grumbling that “These journalists are like Drew Barrymore, who was terrified of harming Kamala’s career in an interview.” We don’t recall Graham ever criticizing Faulkner for her softball questions to Trump.