CNN political analyst David Gregory took after Fox News on Wednesday’s New Day, lecturing them to stop saying what CNN and others are doing is “activism over journalism.” This is the same David Gregory who ranted for gun control while displaying a high-capacity magazine (violating D.C. gun laws) on the Meet the Press set. And it’s the same David Gregory that wouldn’t let any Republican bring up rape charges against Bill Clinton when he was an MSNBC host. Gregory didn’t want to talk about that for ten seconds. At NBC and MSNBC, Gregory was more mouthpiece than moderator.
But now, Gregory is insisting “It is a time of reckoning for Republicans, to try and get back on track here and get to the bottom of what the president did.” CNN was insisting on Republicans getting the “courage” to “rein in” the president:
DAVID GREGORY: I think that the question is to what extent they fear reprisals from the president. Do they fear the politics? Or, do they feel that he is so weakened that they can step out and be independent?What you'd like to see is some actual courage here. And --
CHRIS CUOMO: But it will take courage. Is there any sign that he's been weakened? He's certainly getting beat up and not helped by how they're handling it. But the base numbers, every time they measure it, strong.
GREGORY: Well they are strong for now, but they've been getting weaker. I'm certainly not going to predict the president's political future. We've all been wrong about that. But I also think we have to take things one step at a time. I mean, within the media itself, you got Fox News out there savaging everybody, talking about, "This is activism over journalism." Stop, stop yourselves, OK? Let's just keep our eye -- journalism matters. We have been reminded of that in the past few days. There's been great journalism that’s come under the Trump administration. Everybody's got to do their job. Journalists do their job. See where that takes you. Congress has got to do its job. You've got a president who is both ill-informed and does not have experience and who thinks he can bully his way through our democratic system.
This is exactly the kind of partisan hackwork we’re used to from Gregory. Journalists are just “doing their job” when they talk up impeaching a Republican. Apparently, journalists were just “doing their job” when told Republicans to shut up about Bill Clinton raping women. That’s called activism over journalism. And we won’t stop denouncing it, David Gregory.
CNN’s Chris Cillizza – the same genius who said there was no pro-Hillary bias in the press – agreed with Gregory, that the media wasn’t the issue, and that this new scandal wasn’t the media’s fault, it was Trump’s fault:
CILLIZZA: Journalists are exposing this! We didn’t create these facts! This idea of sabotage, that’s fine for the Republican base. There are people who will never believe anything that the three of us [panelists Cillizza, Gregory and Jeffrey Toobin] or the two of you guys [anchors Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota] say. But that is not what is at issue here.
What is at issue is the FBI director in a memo alleged that the President of the United States said to stop or urged him to stop investigating. We just need to focus on that one thing, because that is of critical import. All of the other noise about the media, and [put] what we’re doing or not doing aside. That is a fact that exists or it doesn't.
