Earlier today, Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press did an interview with Donald Trump. I think it’s the perfect example of the media learning no lessons on how to cover Donald Trump as he prepares to run for president in 2024. Here’s my reaction to it:
I said this yesterday and will say it again. Steve, please help these newspeople in any way you can!
“Steve I hope that every journalist who is set to interview DT is watching and listening to you on a regular basis. I hope they are consulting and communicating with you behind the scenes. I hope that as a consultant and advisor to politicians you are now becoming that to journalists and news broadcasters. They all need your guidance as to the truth of what the election is about and which tough questions should be asked.”
Welker lost me when she referred to this man as “Mr. President “ and his “wife” as “ First Lady”. He gaslit most of the questions and spouted lie after lie, which were never sufficiently challenged. I am looking away from MSM toward Jack Smith and Fani Willis. I have to have hope that justice will win out in the end. It is the only thing I have left to trust.
I agree. He is not president. It is one thing to call any other former president “Mr. President.” None of the former ther members of the club ever refused to concede an election and then actively and successfully succeeded in convincing an entire segment of stupid that he is, in fact, still president.
Calling him that plays right into his tiny, stubby fingered, porcine hands.
Agree. The MSM has abandoned their responsibility to inform the public of danger. They are looking at the crimes against democracy like one side of a political debate. They could be reporting this like a coming hurricane.
I watched 1 or 2 minutes and almost threw the remote at the TV - coming to the same conclusions that you outlined. What the heck is wrong with mainstream media today? I am beyond frustrated with the pure ineptitude of the network news institutions.
One problem is Dump is a crybaby and a true wimp, a vindictive bully who would get up, leave the interview and never give time to that network again. Which would be fine by me, but not the network. Still, that is no excuse for hiring Welker to cower under her chair and offer "Mr. President" a forum for his unending influential lies and dangerous propaganda.
I was so disappointed and disgusted that Kristen didn’t call him out on his gaslighting lies. I shut off the television after screaming like a lunatic.
I know this is wrong but I cannot handle any of this nonsense anymore. We have had 8 years of Trump’s lies. He is destroying our democracy. We are a country going into the gutter fast. Between Bobbert , MTG and all the losers in congress that are disgusting, uneducated and just utterly pathetic. I’m tuning out for good. My mental health can’t take it
I understand that feeling but i cannot give into it . I cannot honor my rage and my depression anymore we have to somehow speak out even if network tv wont. It seems These people have agreed to participate in the loss of our way of life. Our Democracy. For Cash.
And don't think the Republicans are the only ones to blame.
When it gets right down to it, the Democrat party is WEAK. All you need to do is look at how McConnell blocked Obama's Supreme Court nomination. Republicans NEVER would have stood for that. Or how about Gore swiftly throwing in the towel after "losing" Florida (and de facto the entire election) by 0.009% of the vote. Or the Biden DOJ refusing to investigate a riot on the Capitol for OVER TWO YEARS until they were shamed into it by a Republican (Liz Cheney).
I agree one hundred percent that this is what is happening. I do not believe that the people who have position such as she has and others have ever experienced what the world looks like when books are being burned, when people are removed from their homes because of their religion, when humans are blamed for doing nothing except for existing, etc. etc. This is what leads me to believe that humans somehow do not comprehend what will or can happen to us ...to the world we know and love.
There will always be those that wish to take it away from us and it appears those that are in control are now suspect!
I saw this coming all week with so many NBC hosts promoting the interview. Earlier in the week Lester Holt, as part of the evening news, tells us to listen to Trump’s reaction to Hunter Biden or the Biden impeachment inquiry or some such and cuts to a clip of the interview. I shrieked, pretty sure I cussed and raced to shut the tv off. Why. Do. We. Need. To. Hear. This… Madness.
I completely understand where you are coming from! I often feel the same way! Just remember, that that is just what Trump and his followers want us to feel-drained, and helpless, so that we will quit the fight! They celebrate, because every time a "normal" GOP retires or quits, they can replace that politician with another MAGA!
Don't give up! Turn off the noise! Fight for our democracy in different ways. Help young people register to vote! Be an election judge! Pray, just pray for our country! Pray for the judges and the members of the juries that will be trying Trump and his friends! Pray for the safety of those men and women who will be bravely doing their duties as citizens! Pray that the trials will let every American citizen know the truth, no matter the outcome! Pray that justice will be served!
Our democracy is too important to quit! I don't have children of my own, but as a retired teacher, I think of the generations that will follow us, for their sake, we must continue the fight!
Hang in there, Jacqueline, we are all in this together! And with God's help, we will win the fight!
Its not just Trump though. I am watching the "hearings" with Merrick Garland. We HAVE to start making it plain that politics are separate from facts. Really. It is up to each of us to remind ourselves and our friends and families that every day.
This is one of the most horrendously biased and blatant advertisement for whos not up to the task of interviewing Donald Trump. Over and over again he lies. And they let him. They let him lie , i was embarassed for Ms Welker but that, furious at the blase’ soft pedaling .
NBC of course cares only about the almighty dollar.
So they dont really give a crap if the same old lies get told. And Steve Schmidt is right..... to continually back up his lies about Democrats was less than credible.
I caught an excerpt of Welker's interview and thought to myself that here was another "star" failing at an interview. Trump puts interviewers in a bind. If you are tough with him he will get up and walk out. If you aren't he walks all over you as he did with Welker, with Collins, with Megan and others I've no doubt forgotten because it is all so forgettable.
The only person who questions him well is Yamishe Alcindor and he hates her. He insults her. Doesn't bother her. Nobody calls him a liar to his face. Nobody asks him how the election could have been stolen from him but not from anyone on the same ballot and if he's so smart he would know that.
But here's the bottom line for me: Forget interviewing Trump. He has nothing new to say. He has nothing true to say. Ignore him. Refuse to speak with him because he lies. Refuse to give him air. Sequester him on the right. Shun him. Tell him to his face that if he continues to lie he doesn't have credibility.
Nobody stands up to him. They are way too polite. If he calls a woman interviewer ugly or fat, no one has asked him if he has looked in the mirror lately. No one ask him why he has such a trashmouth.
Let him get up and walk out. Then tell everyone that he has walked out on the Country. Because that's really what has happened.
Keep up the drumbeat Steve. Keep on the press. They are so self-absorbed they don't even get how they are failing. But they are. Almost all of them but especially the TV folks who just aren't tough enough or skilled enough to pull it off. Mike Wallace. Edward Murrow. Even David Frost would have handled him. Not this crew. They just don't have the stones it takes.
Pre-recorded Show: Kristen attempted to do a good job but consider the source of the comments! Trump is a pro at handling women with disrespect, talking over them, and showing what a complete know-it-all he always is! Pathetic display of very bad behavior on his part.
She loss me as a viewer. I firmly believe that media types like her that give Trump a platform to spew his lies and hate are complicit in spreading his propaganda. It is apparent that the media has learned nothing from 2016. I will not open, I will not watch any show or listen to any podcast that shows him, especially him speaking. COMCAST needs to get NBC and MSNBC up to speed on lessons they should have learned.
Steve, you may be correct about Welker. But I was impressed by Andrew Weissman’s and Neal Katyal’s observation that in her way, she got Trump to acknowledge that he was responsible for the actions that were taken in his name, not the people who were purportedly working for him. Katyal and Weissman indicated that by eliciting this admission, Welker added an important arrow into the quiver of Jack Smith’s evidence against Trump. The admission of responsibility does not seem like small potatoes. I grant that to get this admission she had to normalize Trump and that is unfortunate. But I’m afraid that particular ship, normalizing Trump, sailed long ago and there is no undoing it, much as we might like to. Trump himself will have to undermine that normalization, or to pursue the “ship” metaphor, sink it himself. If the rule of law retains any cachet and authority, he may well do it. If it does not, well, we’re all down filth’s creek and there are few with paddles. It is the Network, not Welker, normalizing Trump and his crew.
Glad you called out NBC as most complicit in giving trump a platform. The networks should at least fact-check in real time on the screen while lies are told.
I have only seen snippets and that has been, nauseatingly, enough.
Why oh why does anyone refer to him as Mr. President????? It is an honorific he does NOT deserve. Mr. Trump should suffice as a formality. He is NOT president and calling him one just stokes his outsized ego.
He owned her. He hates women. He hates people of color. He hates anyone who isn’t a sycophant. Why in the world did NBC think this was wise????
Steve, your take is spot on. Ms. Welker, who I think highly of, was absolutely not up to the task, as apparently few on air journalists are. And so all day long MSNBC, the background music of my life, gave her big props for her high character and venerable new position.......And then proceeded to fact check Trump in their next breaths. What a hot mess.
First of all no respectable news anchor should ever do an interview with that guy (DT)!! All he ever does is exactly what Steve just said, lie, lie some more, and then gaslight! I like Kristen but she just didn’t have the bite for this interview. I would say this, how much of that BS interview can and will be used against him in a court proceeding?...hmmm!! You never know with the DT! Keep up the good work Steve!
Exactly, NO respectable news anchor! Which is why if the media would put country before ratings, they would choose the toughest interviewers who will not back down to Trump and when he refuses to face them then no airtime at all!! How we all wish ...
I thought she okay but you’re right, it was not the style of Mehdi Hassan who knows how to respond and eviscerate appropriately and not let the BS take hold
I equate DT to necrotizing fasciitis, flesh eating bacteria! He will (and has) consume and destroy the healthy viable body until there is amputation or death! It takes mega doses to eliminate this bacteria before it kills, if you’re lucky
Steven, YOU, more than “we”, your subscribers, are more “wired” into MSNBC and NBC and coming from you (I hope they’ve seen this), this says SO MUCH about what is wrong with EVERYTHING! Democrats play nice, “our” media (MSNBC, CNN) play much TOO NICE. We don’t have FOX spewing out bullshit and “hypnotizing” their audience with such vile, hateful, and inaccurate rhetoric that has divided our country over the years. Our democracy IS circling the drain, so PLEASE, if there’s anyway to get through to YOUR media connections, -- you know the back-channels to get this done. I love Welker as much as anyone, but she friggin blew it. I’m so glad you’ve call her out. PLEASE do the same to the NETWORKS....before it’s too late. It was good seeing you reappear on TV the other night (Joy Reid)...WE NEED YOUR VOICE BACK ON THERE, PLEASE!!!!!!!!
When he said state or federal laws, didn’t matter to him, on abortion, why didn’t she tell him state laws are basically the problem? And that women are dealing with a patchwork of oppression because states are not consistent in their laws?
Just one of numerous nothingness and lies. What an embarrassment. She was humiliated on her debut show. Such a shame. She did a good job as White House correspondent. This gig has hurt her already.
I said this yesterday and will say it again. Steve, please help these newspeople in any way you can!
“Steve I hope that every journalist who is set to interview DT is watching and listening to you on a regular basis. I hope they are consulting and communicating with you behind the scenes. I hope that as a consultant and advisor to politicians you are now becoming that to journalists and news broadcasters. They all need your guidance as to the truth of what the election is about and which tough questions should be asked.”
Welker lost me when she referred to this man as “Mr. President “ and his “wife” as “ First Lady”. He gaslit most of the questions and spouted lie after lie, which were never sufficiently challenged. I am looking away from MSM toward Jack Smith and Fani Willis. I have to have hope that justice will win out in the end. It is the only thing I have left to trust.
I agree. He is not president. It is one thing to call any other former president “Mr. President.” None of the former ther members of the club ever refused to concede an election and then actively and successfully succeeded in convincing an entire segment of stupid that he is, in fact, still president.
Calling him that plays right into his tiny, stubby fingered, porcine hands.
Agree. The MSM has abandoned their responsibility to inform the public of danger. They are looking at the crimes against democracy like one side of a political debate. They could be reporting this like a coming hurricane.
Welker is a pretender. No more need be said.
I watched 1 or 2 minutes and almost threw the remote at the TV - coming to the same conclusions that you outlined. What the heck is wrong with mainstream media today? I am beyond frustrated with the pure ineptitude of the network news institutions.
One problem is Dump is a crybaby and a true wimp, a vindictive bully who would get up, leave the interview and never give time to that network again. Which would be fine by me, but not the network. Still, that is no excuse for hiring Welker to cower under her chair and offer "Mr. President" a forum for his unending influential lies and dangerous propaganda.
Not a very good match with Kristen!
Oh but she more or less competently moderated that presidential debate.
A one-on-one interview obviously NOT the same thing.
I was so disappointed and disgusted that Kristen didn’t call him out on his gaslighting lies. I shut off the television after screaming like a lunatic.
I know this is wrong but I cannot handle any of this nonsense anymore. We have had 8 years of Trump’s lies. He is destroying our democracy. We are a country going into the gutter fast. Between Bobbert , MTG and all the losers in congress that are disgusting, uneducated and just utterly pathetic. I’m tuning out for good. My mental health can’t take it
I understand that feeling but i cannot give into it . I cannot honor my rage and my depression anymore we have to somehow speak out even if network tv wont. It seems These people have agreed to participate in the loss of our way of life. Our Democracy. For Cash.
And don't think the Republicans are the only ones to blame.
When it gets right down to it, the Democrat party is WEAK. All you need to do is look at how McConnell blocked Obama's Supreme Court nomination. Republicans NEVER would have stood for that. Or how about Gore swiftly throwing in the towel after "losing" Florida (and de facto the entire election) by 0.009% of the vote. Or the Biden DOJ refusing to investigate a riot on the Capitol for OVER TWO YEARS until they were shamed into it by a Republican (Liz Cheney).
And the list goes on and on and on...
I agree one hundred percent that this is what is happening. I do not believe that the people who have position such as she has and others have ever experienced what the world looks like when books are being burned, when people are removed from their homes because of their religion, when humans are blamed for doing nothing except for existing, etc. etc. This is what leads me to believe that humans somehow do not comprehend what will or can happen to us ...to the world we know and love.
There will always be those that wish to take it away from us and it appears those that are in control are now suspect!
I saw this coming all week with so many NBC hosts promoting the interview. Earlier in the week Lester Holt, as part of the evening news, tells us to listen to Trump’s reaction to Hunter Biden or the Biden impeachment inquiry or some such and cuts to a clip of the interview. I shrieked, pretty sure I cussed and raced to shut the tv off. Why. Do. We. Need. To. Hear. This… Madness.
I completely understand where you are coming from! I often feel the same way! Just remember, that that is just what Trump and his followers want us to feel-drained, and helpless, so that we will quit the fight! They celebrate, because every time a "normal" GOP retires or quits, they can replace that politician with another MAGA!
Don't give up! Turn off the noise! Fight for our democracy in different ways. Help young people register to vote! Be an election judge! Pray, just pray for our country! Pray for the judges and the members of the juries that will be trying Trump and his friends! Pray for the safety of those men and women who will be bravely doing their duties as citizens! Pray that the trials will let every American citizen know the truth, no matter the outcome! Pray that justice will be served!
Our democracy is too important to quit! I don't have children of my own, but as a retired teacher, I think of the generations that will follow us, for their sake, we must continue the fight!
Hang in there, Jacqueline, we are all in this together! And with God's help, we will win the fight!
Yes, don't watch anymore. Really, don't! Read my comment if you can find it.
Its not just Trump though. I am watching the "hearings" with Merrick Garland. We HAVE to start making it plain that politics are separate from facts. Really. It is up to each of us to remind ourselves and our friends and families that every day.
This is one of the most horrendously biased and blatant advertisement for whos not up to the task of interviewing Donald Trump. Over and over again he lies. And they let him. They let him lie , i was embarassed for Ms Welker but that, furious at the blase’ soft pedaling .
NBC of course cares only about the almighty dollar.
So they dont really give a crap if the same old lies get told. And Steve Schmidt is right..... to continually back up his lies about Democrats was less than credible.
I caught an excerpt of Welker's interview and thought to myself that here was another "star" failing at an interview. Trump puts interviewers in a bind. If you are tough with him he will get up and walk out. If you aren't he walks all over you as he did with Welker, with Collins, with Megan and others I've no doubt forgotten because it is all so forgettable.
The only person who questions him well is Yamishe Alcindor and he hates her. He insults her. Doesn't bother her. Nobody calls him a liar to his face. Nobody asks him how the election could have been stolen from him but not from anyone on the same ballot and if he's so smart he would know that.
But here's the bottom line for me: Forget interviewing Trump. He has nothing new to say. He has nothing true to say. Ignore him. Refuse to speak with him because he lies. Refuse to give him air. Sequester him on the right. Shun him. Tell him to his face that if he continues to lie he doesn't have credibility.
Nobody stands up to him. They are way too polite. If he calls a woman interviewer ugly or fat, no one has asked him if he has looked in the mirror lately. No one ask him why he has such a trashmouth.
Let him get up and walk out. Then tell everyone that he has walked out on the Country. Because that's really what has happened.
Keep up the drumbeat Steve. Keep on the press. They are so self-absorbed they don't even get how they are failing. But they are. Almost all of them but especially the TV folks who just aren't tough enough or skilled enough to pull it off. Mike Wallace. Edward Murrow. Even David Frost would have handled him. Not this crew. They just don't have the stones it takes.
Pre-recorded Show: Kristen attempted to do a good job but consider the source of the comments! Trump is a pro at handling women with disrespect, talking over them, and showing what a complete know-it-all he always is! Pathetic display of very bad behavior on his part.
So agree. Why don’t the networks put up tougher interviewers ~ like Medhi Hassan ~ in any tv broadcast interview with Trump???? It is maddening
And, a complete waste of time! Trump is a worthless frump! Frumpy Trumpy?
Not a chance, Kristen. Sorry.
She loss me as a viewer. I firmly believe that media types like her that give Trump a platform to spew his lies and hate are complicit in spreading his propaganda. It is apparent that the media has learned nothing from 2016. I will not open, I will not watch any show or listen to any podcast that shows him, especially him speaking. COMCAST needs to get NBC and MSNBC up to speed on lessons they should have learned.
Steve, you may be correct about Welker. But I was impressed by Andrew Weissman’s and Neal Katyal’s observation that in her way, she got Trump to acknowledge that he was responsible for the actions that were taken in his name, not the people who were purportedly working for him. Katyal and Weissman indicated that by eliciting this admission, Welker added an important arrow into the quiver of Jack Smith’s evidence against Trump. The admission of responsibility does not seem like small potatoes. I grant that to get this admission she had to normalize Trump and that is unfortunate. But I’m afraid that particular ship, normalizing Trump, sailed long ago and there is no undoing it, much as we might like to. Trump himself will have to undermine that normalization, or to pursue the “ship” metaphor, sink it himself. If the rule of law retains any cachet and authority, he may well do it. If it does not, well, we’re all down filth’s creek and there are few with paddles. It is the Network, not Welker, normalizing Trump and his crew.
Glad you called out NBC as most complicit in giving trump a platform. The networks should at least fact-check in real time on the screen while lies are told.
Here is the Katyal-Weissman clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrP_4xcVQyU&t=329s
I have only seen snippets and that has been, nauseatingly, enough.
Why oh why does anyone refer to him as Mr. President????? It is an honorific he does NOT deserve. Mr. Trump should suffice as a formality. He is NOT president and calling him one just stokes his outsized ego.
He owned her. He hates women. He hates people of color. He hates anyone who isn’t a sycophant. Why in the world did NBC think this was wise????
Steve, your take is spot on. Ms. Welker, who I think highly of, was absolutely not up to the task, as apparently few on air journalists are. And so all day long MSNBC, the background music of my life, gave her big props for her high character and venerable new position.......And then proceeded to fact check Trump in their next breaths. What a hot mess.
First of all no respectable news anchor should ever do an interview with that guy (DT)!! All he ever does is exactly what Steve just said, lie, lie some more, and then gaslight! I like Kristen but she just didn’t have the bite for this interview. I would say this, how much of that BS interview can and will be used against him in a court proceeding?...hmmm!! You never know with the DT! Keep up the good work Steve!
No respectable station should give Trump a platform . He’ll do the same thing everytime . And most news today is also part of his lie.
Exactly, NO respectable news anchor! Which is why if the media would put country before ratings, they would choose the toughest interviewers who will not back down to Trump and when he refuses to face them then no airtime at all!! How we all wish ...
I thought she okay but you’re right, it was not the style of Mehdi Hassan who knows how to respond and eviscerate appropriately and not let the BS take hold
I equate DT to necrotizing fasciitis, flesh eating bacteria! He will (and has) consume and destroy the healthy viable body until there is amputation or death! It takes mega doses to eliminate this bacteria before it kills, if you’re lucky
2016 again. All Trump, all networks, “It’s good for ratings.”
And that’s what got him elected in 2016, gif forbid
Steven, YOU, more than “we”, your subscribers, are more “wired” into MSNBC and NBC and coming from you (I hope they’ve seen this), this says SO MUCH about what is wrong with EVERYTHING! Democrats play nice, “our” media (MSNBC, CNN) play much TOO NICE. We don’t have FOX spewing out bullshit and “hypnotizing” their audience with such vile, hateful, and inaccurate rhetoric that has divided our country over the years. Our democracy IS circling the drain, so PLEASE, if there’s anyway to get through to YOUR media connections, -- you know the back-channels to get this done. I love Welker as much as anyone, but she friggin blew it. I’m so glad you’ve call her out. PLEASE do the same to the NETWORKS....before it’s too late. It was good seeing you reappear on TV the other night (Joy Reid)...WE NEED YOUR VOICE BACK ON THERE, PLEASE!!!!!!!!
When he said state or federal laws, didn’t matter to him, on abortion, why didn’t she tell him state laws are basically the problem? And that women are dealing with a patchwork of oppression because states are not consistent in their laws?
Just one of numerous nothingness and lies. What an embarrassment. She was humiliated on her debut show. Such a shame. She did a good job as White House correspondent. This gig has hurt her already.