Stop the presses, the President of the United States gave an interview! That, in and of itself, shouldn’t be newsworthy, but when you’re dealing with an insulated moron who hasn’t given an interview in the gestation period of a human being it is a bit of news. And when that interview is with the vaunted 60 Minutes, it is important. Or at least it used to be.
Much like Meet the Press dined out for years on the job Tim Russert did – getting credit for being a place for “tough” interviews based on his reputation while subsequent hosts slobbered all over Democrats and got into interrupting matches with Republicans until Chuck Todd simply killed the brand – 60 Minutes as a journalistic outfit lives only in the memories of people who no longer watch it. It’s pathetic.
When Lesley Stahl interview Donald Trump it was a non-stop interruption, when Scott Pelley sat down with Joe Biden Pelley had to be careful not to get his face crushed by the President from here he’d had his lips planted.
There was no challenging, which isn’t surprising, but there wasn’t even any pointing out the obvious lies or “factual inaccuracies” from the senile occupant of the Oval Office. Pelley’s one question about Hunter Biden, for example, might as well been cleared by the White House beforehand, if not written by them.
Pelley asked, “Mr. President, if you run again, Republicans are most likely to go after your son Hunter once again. And I wonder what you would like to say about your son and whether any of his troubles have caused conflicts for you or for the United States.” If you expected a question mark at the end of that you don’t understand journalism as it currently exists. There was actually no question about Hunter, there was an opportunity for Joe to say whatever he wanted, unchallenged, before moving on. That allowed Pelley to check the box without asking anything serious like why did Joe lie about meeting more than a dozen times with Hunter’s business partners and those paying him a fortune in industries he had no knowledge of? And why Hunter wasn’t “hired” by these companies until Joe was in a position to have influence over US policy toward the countries and industries these companies operate in?
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There are so many unanswered and important questions that should have been asked, Pelley opted to set the ball on a tee and walk away, no follow-ups, nothing.
Instead of journalism you get throne-sniffing. When asked about inflation, Joe rambled about how it’s not that bad. “Well, first of all, let's put this in perspective. Inflation rate month to month was just-- just an inch, hardly at all,” Biden said in a way someone who is not impacted by inflation at all could say.
Inflation is not a per-month phenomena, it is cumulative. An 8 percent increase one month, year-over-year, followed by another month of 8 percent does not mean priced have increased 16 percent over 2 months. It’s measured against the previous year and means prices are still up 8 percent over the previous year, likely meaning there wasn’t inflation the previous year but now there is. So when Joe says inflation month over month was only up “just an inch,” he’s referring to an 8.2 percent increase one month turning into an 8.3 percent increase the next. That .1 is what inflation was from one month over the previous one, it didn’t reset and disappear. Joe knows this, or at least Scott Pelley should. Yet there was no real pushback on that either.
After Biden claimed credit for creating jobs that were allowed to return after Democrat Governors lifted their forced closure orders and quickly moved on from there. Pelley moved on too, because anything else would’ve been too much like journalism.
Journalism is not what 60 Minutes does anymore, at least when a Democrat is the subject. A Democrat President can say he plans to “continue to grow the economy” when we’ve had 2 quarters of shrinking GDP and receive zero challenge.
It’s beyond embarrassing. Not only could a child ask better, more honest questions of the President of the United States than “award winning journalist” Scott Pelley did, that child could also give better answers. The segment will probably win an Emmy and a Pulitzer.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily nationally syndicated radio show, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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