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That White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany gets under the skin of many so-called reporters is not a new development. But it never gets old pointing out how unhinged and completely lacking in self-awareness some of her most persistent press critics are.
Case in point, CNN’s Oliver Darcy, who is Brian Stelter’s partner in crime when it comes to obsessively focusing on all things Fox News and Republican while ignoring pretty much everything that goes counter to the network’s Orange Man Bad narrative.
Darcy took to the Twitter machine Monday night to express solidarity with the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman (Hillary Clinton’s favorite “reporter”) for her criticisms of McEnany. Here’s what Haberman tweeted, and below that is how Darcy responded:
It underscores that these are not briefings. Hard-pressed to point to news they’ve driven/new information they’ve provided. They’re sessions to yell at reporters. https://t.co/2wcDMWWdwV
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 6, 2020
Agreed. McEnany isn't "briefing" the press. She's assembling journalists into the room to attack them. When journalists say they want briefings, that means a press sec who provides useful info/insight from behind the podium — not one who spends the session dodging & attacking. https://t.co/xFAbL8vS7r
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 6, 2020
Oh, cry me a river. Oliver Darcy and Maggie Haberman really are the last people on the planet who should be lecturing anyone about any alleged failure to “provide useful info/insight” and for supposedly “dodging & attacking” others.
Twitter users were quick to point out that McEnany is only playing by the rules already put in place by supposedly “objective” media reporters like Haberman and Darcy:
Boo, freakin hoo. You all have made the whole thing into obscene adversarial theater. She’s playing YOUR game, not hers.
— Mattphilbin (@Mattphilbin) July 7, 2020
News flash, @OliverDarcy and @MaggieNYT …
The press gets to question @RealDonaldTrump/@PressSec about how the Prez is doing his job.
But guess what? YOU get to be questioned about how YOU'RE doing YOUR job too.
It's a two-way street.https://t.co/w5JNSDbNod
— David Henry (@imau2fan) July 7, 2020
Let me know when actual journalists assemble in that room. What I observe is Democrat apparatchiks with bylines trying to drive a narrative with coordinated, pre-scripted questions.
— Darleen Click #AB5 & #PROAct are unAmerican (@darleenclick) July 7, 2020
Withen almost every question from the press is an accusation, it's clear few of them want "useful information or insight." That was made very clear during the #ChinaVirus task force briefings.
— Betty Ann 🇺🇸 (@bawlaw99) July 7, 2020
These are all great points.
As we’ve seen over and over again at the daily White House press briefings, the coronavirus press briefings, etc, it is without fail that “journalists” like CNN’s Jim Acosta and PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor enter into the room with a left-wing agenda to push and/or an angle to exploit, and they ask the same gotcha questions 10 different ways thinking they’re going to get the answer they want to hear out of McEnany.
But she doesn’t take the bait. Instead, she plays by their rules and effectively does the job she was hired to do. At times, she even turns some of the questions she receives back around on the reporters who ask them, pointing out that they’re either ridiculous or ridiculously biased.
I have to admit, if I got stupid questions thrown at me during every briefing like does President Trump “believe that it was a good thing that the South lost the Civil War?” and “What is the number of dead Americans that [voters] should tolerate where they can argue that ‘yes, he successfully defeated the pandemic?'”, I wouldn’t play nice with the White House press corps, either.
Tweets like Darcy’s really make me wish he was part of the White House press corps, because I’d love to see McEnany mic drop him one good time.
Flashback –>> WH Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s Press Briefing Preparedness Triggers Yet Another CNN Journalist
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