White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci can be forgiven for succumbing to the same illusion that enchants almost every conservative with a moment in the media spotlight: that journalists might really like you.
Whatever agreement he may have had with Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, there was no way a liberal reporter was going to sit on an explosive story like the new communications director trashing the president’s top aides. Lizza told CNN on Thursday night that he would not have published the interview if Scaramucci had told him explicitly that it was off the record. Perhaps not, but he would have found another way to release the same information.
.. There is no reason to trust any reporter, and especially a mainstream media reporter, and particularly a mainstream media reporter from a left-wing publication that has compared your boss to Hitler.
.. How many on the right — President Donald Trump included — have been done in by the big interview with the New York Times, the hope of favorable treatment by CNN, the flattery of BuzzFeed? It always ends the same way — with Lucy swiping the football away from Charlie Brown. And for some reason, Charlie Brown is always surprised.
.. Jake Tapper is a case in point. A left-wing journalist who once wrote for Salon, he ingratiated himself with the right while he was at ABC News because he was the only reporter who dared to ask the Obama administration remotely challenging questions. Breitbart News, of all sites, cheered for Tapper when he moved to CNN and was given his own shows — first The Lead, then the State of the Union gig. And then he turned on us, viciously and emotionally.
.. It is generally good to be cordial to mainstream media journalists. It is almost impossible to be friends with them. They live to destroy conservatives, and they hate this president with a bloodthirsty passion. They obey no rules. There is no quarter asked and none given.
Scaramucci said it best: “What I don’t like about Washington is people do not let you know how they feel. They’re very nice to your face, and then they take a shiv or a machete and they stab it in your back.”
Jake Tapper asked whether Sarah Palin was harassed at Fox News. She didn’t exactly say no.
In a cagey interview on CNN on Thursday, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin declined to give a direct answer when anchor Jake Tapper asked whether she witnessed or experienced sexual harassment when she was a Fox News contributor.
TAPPER: Did you ever witness or experience, God forbid, anything like that at Fox?
PALIN: I wouldn’t put up with anything that would be perceived as intimidating or harassing.
TAPPER: But you said you’re “former,” so was that part of the reason you left?
PALIN: Um, you can ask them why I’m no longer at Fox. You know, I’m not going to speak for them. My contract wasn’t renewed — that is, um, that’s the line.
TAPPER: I don’t want to be a jerk, but it sounds like you experienced something.
PALIN: Um, I just, you know, it was just time to part ways and get out there in, you know, I guess a more diverse arena to express views and speak for the public, and that’s what I’ve been able to do now.
TAPPER: All right, well, I’m not going to push any farther on that.
Palin didn’t say yes, but she didn’t exactly say no, either, and she spoke generally about the need for reform at Fox News.
“Corporate culture there obviously has to change,” Palin said. “Women don’t deserve it. They should not ever have to put up with any kind of intimidating workspace.”
In Trump Era, Uncompromising TV News Should Be the Norm, Not the Exception
.. And, CNN was reporting, the transition team had even sought to get Mr. Flynn’s son a security clearance, for access to sensitive information.
.. And so it went eight times, as Mr. Tapper repeated the question and Mr. Pence accused him of pursuing “a distraction” and tried to change the subject. “I want to move on to other issues,” Mr. Tapper told him, “but I’m afraid I just didn’t get an answer.”
.. On television, in real time, even the best-prepared interviewers may have neither the time nor the facts to catch a lie and call it out. Even when they do, their attempts to call foul can turn into stalemates if the interviewee insists on continuing to forward something that’s false or unsubstantiated, which seems to be the latest craze (see Reince Priebus, millions of illegal votes, “Face the Nation”).
.. Hillary Clinton did not grant Mr. Tapper another interview after a sit-down in early June, when he asked her if questions about her family foundation undermined her criticism of Mr. Trump’s. (In an email, divulged by WikiLeaks, the Clinton adviser John Podesta once called Mr. Tapper a word for the male anatomy not suitable for print.)
.. Mr. Tapper said some of his competitors, whom he did not name, had gone easy on interview subjects to ensure future access. “We’re not supposed to be providing people in power with safe spaces,” he said.
.. You can only imagine how Mr. Russert would have handled Katrina Pierson, the Trump campaign’s national spokeswoman, when she incorrectly asserted on CNN that it was President Obama who invaded Afghanistan, or what short work Mr. Koppel would have made of Mr. Lewandowski in August when he repeated the tired fake claim that Mr. Obama wasn’t born here.
.. CNN was host to such nonsense enough that Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post felt compelled to ask Jeffrey A. Zucker, CNN’s president, at a panel discussion two weeks ago, “At what point do you say, ‘You can’t come on our air anymore’?”
In an interview with me on Friday, Mr. Zucker defended those appearances by saying that they represented Mr. Trump’s worldview, and that his anchors were there to keep them honest and did.
.. Mr. Tapper did not invent the tough interview. George Stephanopoulos and Martha Raddatz of ABC, Chuck Todd of NBC, Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly of Fox News, and John Dickerson of CBS have all had their moments.
And none has yet claimed the mantles of Tim Russert and Ted Koppel, feared interviewers who combined tough styles with incomparable levels of preparation.