The White House has a lot of answering to do lately, especially about its horrific treatment of the press over the last few days.
Things exploded yesterday when CNN’s Jim Acosta was viciously heckled and harassed while he was doing his job at Trump’s Tampa rally. While Acosta was reporting, Trump’s supporters continued to shout things like “CNN sucks!” into the frame. To make matters worse, Trump’s son Eric tweeted the protesters’ disturbing actions in a show of support, and the President of the United States co-signed by retweeting it.
The fact that a president would do such a thing is absolutely disgusting. Needless to say, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had her work cut out for her today as she faced an enraged press during her briefing. Let’s just say she was not prepared! She was first corned by Daily Mail‘s David Martosko, who asked:
Is the White House willing to say right now, in view of what happened to one of our TV colleagues last night, that it is wrong for his most vocal supporters to be menacing towards journalists doing their jobs in a situation like that or any situation?”
Sanders lied and said that Trump “condemns and denounces any group that would incite violence” (even though he encourages it). But she failed to address the rallygoers’ behavior — instead she blamed it on the media. Complete with a bizarre tangent about Osama bin Laden, she said:
The president does think that the media holds a responsibility. We fully support a free press, but there also comes a high level of responsibility with that. The media routinely reports on classified information and government secrets that put lives in danger and risk valuable national security tools. This has happened both in our administration and in past administrations. One of the worst cases was the reporting on the U.S. ability to listen to Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone in the late ’90s. Because of that reporting he stopped using that phone and the country lost valuable intelligence. Unfortunately it’s now standard to abandon common-sense ethical practices. This is a two-way street. We certainly support a free press, we certainly condemn violence against anybody, but we also ask people act responsibly and report accurately and fairly.”
Martosko wasn’t letting that fly — as no reporter should. He shot back:
No one was being violent in terms of hitting anybody and no broadcaster was broadcasting state secrets. They were trying to do stand-ups at a public rally and you had people trying to yell over them preventing them from doing their jobs and yelling that their network sucks on live TV. Does the White House support that or not?”
Sanders was just about ready to explode. She just continued to say the White House stood for a free press as well as freedom of speech. It was a weak statement that she should be ashamed of, and America knows it’s complete bullsh*t. Martosko didn’t hesitate to take to Twitter and blast the Trump administration:
So the takeaway is that the White House won’t discourage the president’s crowds from shouting down reporters and yelling that their networks suck during live broadcasts. Good to know. There’s a First Amendment tension between speech and press, and ultimately one side must lose.
— David Martosko (@dmartosko) August 1, 2018
BTW, when @PressSec said reporters disclosed info about Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone and cited it as an instance of media run amok, she was spreading fake news. https://t.co/iLORJfQAv4
— David Martosko (@dmartosko) August 1, 2018
There are no words for how the White House is treating the free press. It is now an all-out assault.
Featured image via screen capture
