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A Shooter Is Trans and the Press Is Trash, Vivek Shows Up Journos, and Stelter Shows He's Still Oblivious

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Jan 05, 2024
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01.05.24

Presentation Paradox – MSNBC

  • Proving himself inconsequential while straining to remain relevant.

Fresh off of his failed book launch, Brian Stelter sat in with MSNBC's Ari Melber to discuss the state of the media amid layoffs that have spread like wildfire across the industry. Brian laments the reality and likens the need for journalists to be like the need for smoke detectors.

What is amazing is that few in the press want to see the central problem of the persistent lying to the public. Consider this: How is it the press constantly touts how glorious our economy is under Biden when their own industry is going under at the same time?

Race to the Bottom – WASHINGTON POST

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When it comes to Vivek Ramaswamy as a candidate, I am not too enthralled. His views get a bit too scattershot to take seriously, but at the same time, I do not want him to go away. One of the things he has shown himself adept at is dealing with the media, and he has put on a clinic this week. At an event, he was challenged by a Washington Post reporter, Meryl Kornfield, when she posed a question about whether he would condemn white supremacy.

Let's just hit the PAUSE button right there; this is a white reporter asking that of a POC candidate. Already, you see the foundational flaws in this "journalism."

Vivek went on to say, "Of course, I condemn any form of vicious racial discrimination in this country," which is rather all-encompassing to include her targeted topic, but after Ramaswamy expounded on the race subject, Kornfield was at a loss. So she stuck with her already disproven premise and said, "You didn't say that you condemn white supremacy." Vivek calmly and politely took Meryl to the woodshed:

I'm not going to recite some catechism for you. I'm against vicious racial discrimination in this country. So, I'm not pledging allegiance to your new religion of modern wokeism. I'm not going to bend the knee to your religion, I'm sorry. I'm not asking you to bend the knee to mine, and I'm not going to bend the knee to yours. But do I condemn vicious discrimination? Yes, I do. Am I going to play your silly game of 'gotcha?' No, I'm not, and frankly this is why people have lost trust.

Then something amazing transpired. Ramaswamy closed by predicting to Kornfield that despite his repeatedly condemning all racism, she would still write that he refused to condemn white supremacy. And with amazing obliviousness, she did exactly that.

Vivek is showing the way. He refuses to play the game, lays things out in a calm fashion with digestible facts, and challenges the premises put forward by the press. We need more of this, and he and Ron DeSantis are displaying how it needs to be done.

Pre-Written Field Reports – NBC NEWS

  • Dealing with facts manages to upset a journalist.

In another interview, Ramaswamy was sitting with Dasha Burns, and she, too – a white woman – brought up the white supremacy issue, and it was a mistake. Vivek was calm and unspooled more facts, and Burns lost her composure, looked visibly angry, and attempted to speak over him many times. 

Just like with Kornfield, Burns was entrenched in a particular position and completely inflexible despite ostensibly asking him for his views. He even exposed one of their games when it came to statistics by pointing out that federal LOE statistics show more blacks are killed by blacks than any other group. Burns jumped immediately to, "Yes, but hate-crime statistics show…" and he gently closed her down, not allowing her to massage the number in her favor, saying that lives matter.

I may not want him to sit at the Resolute Desk, but whoever is president would do well to have Ramaswamy as press secretary or director of communications.

Gilded Reframe – VARIOUS OUTLETS

  • This non-reaction is too damned predictable any longer.

Whenever there is a shooting, a predictable pattern is guaranteed to play out. The press will leap with blame and accusation, leading to days of grave pontificating and looking into the causes and who gets the blame. But the moment the shooter is found to be from a minority or a protected group, the reaction from many of us on the right becomes, "Well, this story is about to disappear."

Such is the case of the 17-year-old who just shot up a high school in Iowa, killing one and wounding others. The moment the shooter was found to be identifying as trans or otherwise affiliated with the LGBT community, the outrage in the press died off quickly. No exploration of his social media. No listing of what groups might have inspired him. And certainly, as we have come to learn from Tennessee, no desire at all to find a manifesto.

The Associated Press managed to not only walk away from the shooter's hate, but it managed to go completely around the horizon and come back to blame…anyone else. The shooting was implied to be the result of persistent bullying, and the shooter had just reached a breaking point. Sympathy for a shooter. This is a new low.

News Avoidance Syndrome – LOS ANGELES TIMES

Interestingly, we see no reporting of threats to our nation, no outrage about treason, or any other similar argument in this report about protesters storming into the California state Capitol and shutting down the government: "Hundreds of protesters convened at the state Capitol on Wednesday and shut down the Assembly."

Sounds rather insurrectiony to us. One of the politicians, trying to sound sympathetic to the pro-Palestinian protests, also intoned how this was an interruption sounding like treason:

"We hear them, we support them, however we have to make sure that the legislative business is done for the entire state of California,” Assemblyman Mike Gipson (D-Carson) said as the demonstrators’ chants echoed throughout the halls. “This just stopped what we needed to do,” he said.

Stopping the legislative process? Sounds to us like a textbook example of a threat to our democracy. It doesn't sound that way to the LA Times, or most of the rest of the media complex.

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"Riffed from the Headlines" is Townhall's daily VIP feature with coverage of the deeply flawed aspects of journalism in the nation, where Brad Slager looks to bring accountability to the mishaps, malaprops, misdeeds, manipulations, malpractice, and manufactured narratives in mainstream media.