Nearly two days after Donald Trump revoked press credentials of The Washington Post for his campaign events, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports was still wallowing over it on Wednesday afternoon as the eponymous host and her panel slammed the idea that a candidate would attack the liberal media as both “petulant and childish” plus bashed the Reagan administration’s press record.
Mitchell pivoted from fawning over the Senate Democratic filibuster for gun control to Trump’s press ban by turning to Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, who made the now-routine comparison of Trump to Richard Nixon.
“It's appalling. I’m going to use a very strong therm but it's Nixonian and it's scary not only because it covers our ability to cover candidate Trump but it's really scary to me about what a President Trump would do in office,” Marcus declared.
Somehow, Mitchell found it pertinent to invoke the late Ronald Reagan and blast how his administration treated her:
Ruth, you and I have some history going back to the early Clinton years, but my background is in 1982, I was threatened with being put out of business because of a report I filed on the Reagan White House during the midterm elections and then in 1987, the chief of staff of the Reagan White House, Donald Reagan, said he was going to get me fired when I was a White House correspondent for a report I did on Iran-Contra[.]
Marcus interjected to pay homage to late colleague Anne Devroy who, as Mitchell explained:
When she reported she had taken a Marine One helicopter to — or wanted to go up to visit the President when he was recovering from surgery and nobody who is not either the President or the Vice President takes one of those helicopters from the South Lawn[.]
Even though the entire duration of the segment had consisted of Mitchell’s show attacking Republicans for not being fond of the press, she footnoted how “the record of White House officials or political candidates against the press is not exactly stellar.”
Instead of pointing out any one of the instances where the Obama administration or his State Department have stymied or smeared reporters, New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters returned to Trump and whined that the “liberal media is a favorite chew toy of the political right.”
Peters added that while his supporters will view his move concerning The Post is an act of strength, he determined (even though it’s not really his choice to decide) that most Americans who don’t fully back Trump will “see it as petulant and childish.”
Capping off the segment of selective outrage concerning the treatment of the press, Mitchell again made barely a nod to the other side of the equation before a break: “Well, we should just also point out that, as Ruth knows well, when the inspector general's report on Hillary Clinton's e-mail use came out, they were railing against us as well. So politicians of both stripes rail against the media.”
The relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on June 15 can be found below.
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports
June 15, 2016
12:47 p.m. Eastern
ANDREA MITCHELL: And I want to go to our colleagues from The Washington Post, Chris and Marcus, because The Washington Post may be black listed from the Trump campaign but certainly not from this broadcast or any place else that I know. Ruth, first to you. The immediate Trump media ban, first against Politico and some of the others, now against The Washington Post, what do you make of this?
RUTH MARCUS: It's appalling. I’m going to use a very strong therm but it's Nixonian and it's scary not only because it covers our ability to cover candidate Trump but it's really scary to me about what a President Trump would do in office. We saw a President use his office many decades ago to go after the media and to go after the media's business interests and to put reporters on his enemies list and this is just behavior that, look, all politicians get frustrated with their media coverage. We — they may punish reporters by not giving them key interviews or things like that, but just excluding us from rallies, I think we have a reporter at a rally right now, so it's not that effective, is self-defeating and it diminishes Mr. Trump more than it hurts us.
(....)
MITCHELL: Ruth, you and I have some history going back to the early Clinton years, but my background is in 1982, I was threatened with being put out of business because of a report I filed on the Reagan White House during the midterm elections and then in 1987, the chief of staff of the Reagan White House, Donald Reagan, said he was going to get me fired when I was a White House correspondent for a report I did on Iran-Contra, so —
MARCUS: And he went after our late great colleague Anne Devroy as well, if you'll recall.
MITCHELL: When she reported she had taken a Marine One helicopter to — or wanted to go up to visit the President when he was recovering from surgery and nobody who is not either the President or the Vice President takes one of those helicopters from the South Lawn, so the record of White House officials or political candidates against the press is not exactly stellar. Jeremy Peters and you, of course, come from The New York Times —
JEREMY PETERS: We haven't been banned yet.
MITCHELL: — which represents the news organization that pursued the landmark case in the Pentagon Papers that resulted in one of the most important pieces — well, one of the most important Supreme Court rulings on prior restraint. I'm not the lawyer that Ruth Marcus is here, but —
PETERS: Absolutely. And I just don't see Trump getting much out of this in terms of affecting the coverage. What he's clearly trying to do is use his right-leaning base, get them all riled up which, let's face it, the quote/unquote, liberal media is a favorite chew toy of the political right and as long as they can slap us around, it's going to probably make — it plays into this image that he's a tough guy. He doesn't pull any punches and he's not going to take any crap from anybody and that's the way that a lot of his supporters will see it. I think the rest of the country is going to see it as petulant and childish.
MITCHELL: Well, we should just also point out that, as Ruth knows well, when the inspector general's report on Hillary Clinton's e-mail use came out, they were railing against us as well. So politicians of both stripes rail against the media.
