“You won’t answer your own questions,” Tim Burchett complained to Pam Brown of CNN. Whut? And that would have been *normal* if that was the weirdest comment that was made today, in this day and age. But it got much stranger. Tim Burchett must have drawn the short straw because some Republican had to show up on the news shows and explain what in the world was going on with DOGE. Burchett made it clear that he hasn’t got the slightest idea and he also got peeved with Brown for pointing out to him that his comments were not responsive to her question, i.e., he was talking but he wasn’t answering anything she asked. How dare she ask? That was the takeaway.
Do you love the segue straight into transgender women stealing luggage and millions of dollars going to Mozambique for circumcisions? This is so utterly brainless that if you wrote it as part of a script, the script would be thrown back at you with the comment, “C’mon. No freaking body is THAT stupid. Nobody would believe this.” Well, Congressman Burchett is. And he’s as belligerant as he is stupid. And as unbelievable as it is, we do see it happening, right there on the screen.
And as low as that is, it goes further downhill from there, on the very same day, no less. Same network, different Republican. The GOPers really hate CNN. Maybe CNN should just take a cue from them and stop putting them on the air — or, alternatively, put them on the air with somebody other than a female host to berate. Or with female hosts who will return the hostility blow by blow. Because that’s the main thread running through these two clips, at least at first blush. The women are both being portrayed as uninformed and ill willed at best and stupid as well at worst. Watch how Miller goes into rabid attack dog mode over nothing.
“The American public overwhelmingly supports what President Trump is doing.” 1.5% is not an “overwhelming” margin for anything, in anybody’s book, but Miller insists upon that descriptor. They all insist they’ve got some “mandate” despite all evidence to the contrary.
“Can federal workers do their job?” is Miller’s next slick line of reasoning. He does not want to simply state the parameters of what DOGE employees can or cannot access. And that raises a gigantic red flag. Why the belligerance and rancor if there’s no issue of invasion of privacy and/or using the private data for purposes not disclosed? It’s clear that’s where the CNN host is going but she’s met with rage by Miller.
“The federal government will find every illegal alien who is stealing American tax dollars,” Miller rages on. This isn’t an interview of a government official by a broadcast journalist, this is an episode of domestic violence.
I seriously wonder what Miller would have said to another guy. And maybe it would have been just as hostile. I don’t know. But I am recalling just two days ago when Tom Homan was on Newsmax and decrying AOC as “the dumbest congresswoman ever elected.” Has Mr. Homan never made the acquaintance of Lauren Boebert? Because she has that title sewn up, hook line and sinker.
Point being, raging at women on the air, either to their faces or second hand, seems to be the new GOP normal. I guess we should be grateful that misogyny is that much out in the open.
“Illegal aliens en masse have faked social security numbers.” Now THERE’s a topic. And I wish that Breanna Keilar had jumped on Miller right then and asked, “Source? Citation?” That’s where she dropped the ball totally, as he went on to pontificate about “an entirely class of persons immune from prosecution” (which describes Donald Trump and his cronies, not illegal immigrants.)
And again I blame Keilar for just letting him sit there and lie about “illegal aliens stealing billions, billions with a ‘b’ of taxpayer dollars.” She should have jumped in and asked him for proof of this.
This is where so-called broadcast journalism falls apart every single day. If the level of “civil discourse” in this country has fallen it’s due in large part to the fact that network news and cable news is such a flaming joke. In no way is this level of journalism suited to the problems that this nation really faces and the answers which are really needed.
Every single day MAGA and the GOP walks all over broadcast journalists and they keep booking them in for yet more abuse. This is a public disservice. If the likes of Burchett and Miller keep behaving this way, the hosts need to incinerate them for doing so. Both of them were looking for a fight, so GIVE them the fight! Don’t just sit there and say, “Thank you for your time,” after you’ve been run over with a freight car and made to look like a passive know nothing.
MAGA and Republicans hate women — great. Get women who will give it back to them in spades. Get AOC to talk to Burchett and Miller. That will get some sparks flying.
We’re in the mess we’re in because nobody will fight fire with fire and rise to the challenges of the real world as it currently exists. Gone are the days of broadcast journalists looking good and throwing softball questions. Those days are long over. Either get somebody on the air armed with facts to use those facts and give as good as they get — or decide that being run over is the corporate look that you prefer. Because that’s the message CNN is sending now, that they have no remote freaking clue how to be effective interviewers in the Trump 2.0 era.
And Miller and Burchett know it, so that’s why they attacked CNN by name. CNN disgraced itself today and unless these two interviewers can learn how to fight back effectively in real time, they need to be replaced by people who can and will.
Broadcast journalism is a flaming joke.
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Friends, we can still use a subscription or a donation if you’re able. Times are tough. All we want to do is stay in business and fight the good fight. Democratic depression is widespread but at some point people will get out of the denial stage of grieving and get back in the fight. We want to be there for that. Ursula
In a competitive media market, media that don’t do their job properly lose viewership/readership to other media.
Which is why Meidas now has more viewers then Fox and CNN combined.
Because media now isn’t just broadcast, it’s online as well.
This is true. Meidas is putting out a much better product than this dated shit from a bygone era. It used to be enough to put good looking people on TV to throw the softball questions around but we are wayyy past that. Now that show biz infotainment doesn’t fly and people are looking for something better.
I put a lot more credence in not only Meidas but independent journalists like Josh Marshall, Judd Legum, people who aren’t drinking from the corporate billionaire well.
Ursula, as I watched the Miller “interview,” painful as it was to watch, I had a bit of a different take on it. Miller came unglued for absolutely no apparent reason, EXCEPT that Brianna was asking questions Miller did not want to answer. Short of keeping up a two-way barrage of trying to shout over each other, I think Brianna just sat back and let Miller continue to debase himself, his gender (I’m not even sure I know what gender Miller is; we may have a new category), MAGAts, the GOP, DOGe, and the tRump mid-administration. Miller was so flustered, he couldn’t even remember why he came on CNN today, and I’m sure he wished he had not. When Brianna had had enough, she took what I thought was a powerful position by telling him to calm down. That infuriated him even more, he DID calm down, then realized that she had checked him, and proceeded to start shrieking like a–wait for it–fishwife. Yikes! How does anybody, whatever gender, deal with a maniac like Miller? I get what you’re saying about the need for seriously strong women in the press, but consider the fact that Stephen Miller ain’t ever gonna accept an interview with no Rachel Maddow. If not for some quieter women press peeps, Miller would not have been able to exercise his very Nazi vocal cords on national TV. What do you think of that perspective?
Agree with Concinnity re Meidas Touch Network. But would add Brian Tyler Cohen and several others who are savvy and fearless. However, the problem remains that there are fewer women fighting the good fight regardless of whether it is mainstream or online venues. And it does not seem to occur to too many folks that putting AOC or Jasmine Crockett in front of a camera, both of them fast on their feet, knowledgeable and again, fearless isn’t the entire solution. We need women in those anchor chairs who do not take crap–Joy Reid fills this bill, but she’s only one person.
What I saw today appalled me, which is why I wrote this piece. There is no civility left in the GOP. They all have embraced Trump’s caveman tactics and the misogyny is part of that.
Amen to that. The collapse of the GOP is complete. I think the old white men and Margerie, Loren, and Nancy might as well pick their balls up off the floor and go home.
Civility died in 2016, when Trump ran for president Actually it don’t he’d with the birther crap.
Misogyny has been a constant in the U.S. We had to.fight to get the right to.vote. We are taught to be nice., not to.interrupt a man, not to.embarrass him.by correcting him to “keep.sweet” as the polygamous FLDS say. We can’t afford to pleasant. We have to ask hard questions. When they try to change the subject or evade we need to.make it clear to.the viewers and readers that they did not answer the question.And ask it again.And again.
It’s guard to.overcome that conditioning. But we must. Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight Bring a goddamned bazooka.