Adam Kinzinger: ‘Ratings Aren’t Worth Our Democracy”

Criticism has mounted as today and new Meet the Press Kristen Welker’s “bigly” interview with Trump approached.  I’ve really tried to keep my anger in check.  Let’s just say my inner jarhead grunt is fighting to burst forth and scorch your eyeballs with language that goes way the f**k beyond what humorist Dave Barry liked to call “extremely very bad words.”  I’ve not been a watch of MTP for years, due to former host Chuck Todd’s patented both-siderism and like so many was ecstatic when he decided to exit the set.

What I (and I’ll be you too) didn’t count on was that we’d wind up with worse.  WAY worse.

I didn’t watch this morning.  I took to heart the #BoycottMeetThePressNow which Ursula wrote about here on PZ yesterday.   I knew I’d see plenty more the the promo excerpts I’d seen leading up to today.  The normalization of Trump by Welker is more than infuriating, it’s dangerous to our country.  But for rich and powerful people like those who own and/or control major news outlets money is money and sadly some of the “talent” feels the same way.  Ratings equals money and lots of it.  THAT is the lesson they took away from 2016.  The damage Trump inflicted on our country and the free world?  They “got theirs” and have no f**ks to give.  So once again we have the spectacle of an old, established news outlet with generations of built up respect from incredible reporters and news anchors tossing all that aside.

Selling themselves like crack-hos for some Trump driven ratings.

I saw an article earlier today from Alternet, the theme of which was that Welker’s Trump fluffing interview failed the fact-check test:

“Trump made a spate of false and misleading comments about immigration, foreign policy, abortion, and more” on “at least” eleven occasions, Timm writes.

Well DUH!  Trump lies as easily as he breathes and an interviewer that isn’t both well-prepared and has the guts to push back is going to get rolled.  Welker, the once proud (before Todd) Meet the Press and NBC got rolled.  Raw Story writes about the reaction from legal pundits and let’s just say they are unsparing in their criticism.   There are people you know cited in the article like Professor Laurence Tribe, Andrew Weissman and Neal Katyal but this summed up the overall take:

Lawyer Adam Cohen agreed with the attacks on the interview itself, saying of reporters like Welker, “They never learn. In 2016, even when Trump outed himself as a racist and misogynist the media covered him incessantly. Now, even as Trump currently pursued a coup, CNN gave him a town hall and NBC puts him on TV. Meet the Press was better with Chuck Todd instead of Kristen Welker.”

Awful as it is to contemplate you KNOW NBC and Welker will, like CNN tried with the Kaitlyn Collins fiasco to justify all this.  However it gets, or rather will get worse.  CNN, now NBC have normalized Trump and you just wait – other networks will follow suit.  They are as addicted to Trump ratings money as Don Jr. is to blow.  As obsessed with getting it as Trump still is in banging his own freaking daughter.  The damage they’ve caused, and will cause simply doesn’t factor into things.  That’s why the title of this piece is the quote from Kinzinger, who is cited at the end of the Raw Story article:

“Allowing Trump to lie on MTP and leaving ‘fact checking’ to the website is not how we should be treating a man who launched an insurrection,” he wrote. “It’s 2023, we should have learned this lesson over 7 years. Ratings aren’t worth our democracy.”

CNN and now NBC (well Fox too but that was always a given) clearly think otherwise and mark my words, ABC and CBS (of former President Les Moonves “Trump may be bad for the country but he’s great for ratings” fame) will before long do their own Trump fluffing show.  Democracy be damned.