After boasting about the “deluge” of anti-Trump books (7) published in the last 10 days (with more to come ahead of the election), NBC political director and moderator of Meet the Press, Chuck Todd was worried. He was concerned that the media were losing their “power” to “shame” President Trump and politicians as a whole.
Turning to the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg to talk about his magazine’s new anti-Trump book, The American Crisis (set to be released), Todd declared that his guest spoke for “all of the media” on how “we all underestimated how to cover this President and how to cover his mischaracterizations and lies.”
“Yeah, well, I mean, I think – um – we’re not – we weren’t, at least, trained for such a novel kind of approach to truth and to populism, and even to these authoritarian impulses that you see,” Goldberg bumbled through his response.
Continuing to stumble his way through what he was trying to say, Goldberg argued that Trump lied like no other president or politician in history, and suggested it took a long time for the media to call him a liar:
Um. He – um – you know – We’ve got somebody who doesn't – um – I mean, as Al [Cardenas] just mentioned, there's 20,000 or more lies documented by The Washington Post. And usually, until this presidency, when a president is called out for lying they usually trim their sails a little bit or they apologize or they explain. Um. And what you have here is a new phenomenon for all of us and we're not sure what to do. It's taken us a long time to call a lie a lie.
Todd appeared to take this purported failing of the liberal media to heart and shared his fear that their influence was waning. “As I've said, the only way to understand this is to realize he doesn't have shame about it. And when we lose our ability to shame a politician we lose a lot of our power. That's for sure,” he moaned.
What Todd was whining about was the media losing its ability to act as liberal activists and try to shape the national narrative.
Apparently, NBC Capitol Hill correspondent Kasie Hunt didn’t get the memo. Just a few minutes before Todd’s fretting, Hunt boasted about how she felt Goldberg’s recent anti-Trump hit piece in his magazine and Bob Woodward’s anti-Trump book, Rage were hurting Trump.
“I do think that there's a sense that this particular episode in Woodward's book and also Jeffrey's reporting and it was an aggressive one-two punch, but the sense is that this might actually make a difference,” she said.
Adding: “And one of the pieces of evidence they point to is the fact that the President is out there trying to explain himself. A lot of times with these controversies, he either keeps going, keeps making the same claims or he stops mentioning it eventually. This, he clearly is feeling pressure to try and say, ‘no, I was trying to do the right thing.’ And I think that's really telling.”
She said this despite admitting that she and her liberal media colleagues had suggested “over and over again” that every new revelation was going to force Trump out.
What’s the definition of insanity again?
Todd’s lamenting over the liberal media’s waning influence in the national discourse was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Secret, which is owned by Procter & Gamble, and Pfizer, which got a special shout out. Their contact information is linked so you can tell them about what they fund.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
NBC’s Meet the Press
September 13, 2020
11:09:57 a.m. Eastern(…)
CHUCK TODD: Kasie Hunt, this is your beat, Capitol Hill. You deal with this -- as what Al [Cardenas] just described, there is a whole bunch of elected Republicans – we said some conservatives have been trying to back up the President on the no panic, but we noted not many of them were elected. He elected Republicans are as quiet as they've been and they're pretty quiet in the Trump era.
KASIE HUNT: They are, Chuck, and just when you think that you've gotten to the bottom, the worst possible thing you could throw to a member of Congress or Republican who has to defend the President under something like this, something else happens. And you know, I actually asked Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader about this this week and he didn't want to answer the question. He said, ‘that's a question for the White House. I don't have anything to add.’
I mean, he had said at the time that he hadn't seen the Woodward book. Of course, we had read to him out loud the key portion of it that we are now talking about here today.
I do think that there's a sense that this particular episode in Woodward's book and also Jeffrey's reporting and it was an aggressive one-two punch, but the sense is that this might actually make a difference.
And I know we've said that over and over again and then it never seems to make a difference; starting, you know, with what happened with John McCain back in 2015, but there are more people saying to me, privately, ‘this is really, really difficult to grapple with.’ And one of the pieces of evidence they point to is the fact that the President is out there trying to explain himself. A lot of times with these controversies, he either keeps going, keeps making the same claims or he stops mentioning it eventually. This, he clearly is feeling pressure to try and say, ‘no, I was trying to do the right thing.’ And I think that's really telling.
(…)
11:13:06 a.m. Eastern
TODD: Hey, Jeffrey Goldberg, I – I wanted you to – um – your book is – One of the things you say in the introduction to this book on sort of the best of The Atlantic, I think, over the last four years, is how maybe you and frankly, I think you speak for all of the media, we all underestimated how to cover this President and how to cover his mischaracterizations and lies. Tell us a little bit more.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yeah, well, I mean, I think – um – we’re not – we weren’t, at least, trained for such a novel kind of approach to truth and to populism, and even to these authoritarian impulses that you see.
You know, we've spoken about this in the past. Um. He – um – you know – We’ve got somebody who doesn't – um – I mean, as Al just mentioned, there's 20,000 or more lies documented by The Washington Post. And usually, until this presidency, when a president is called out for lying they usually trim their sails a little bit or they apologize or they explain. Um. And what you have here is a new phenomenon for all of us and we're not sure what to do. It's taken us a long time to call a lie a lie.
TODD: As I've said, the only way to understand this is to realize he doesn't have shame about it. And when we lose our ability to shame a politician we lose a lot of our power. That's for sure. Um.
(…)
