I had not taken seriously the possibility that Donald Trump could win the presidency until I saw Matt Lauer host an hour-long interview with the two major party candidates. Lauer’s performance was not merely a failure, it was horrifying and shocking. The shock, for me, was the realization that most Americans inhabit a very different news environment than professional journalists. I not only consume a lot of news, since it’s my job, I also tend to focus on elite print news sources. Most voters, and all the more so undecided voters, subsist on a news diet supplied by the likes of Matt Lauer. And the reality transmitted to them from Lauer matches the reality of the polls, which is a world in which Clinton and Trump are equivalently flawed.
Lauer’s Pathetic Interview Made Me Think Trump Can Win
“I was totally against the war in Iraq. You can look at Esquire magazine from 2004. You can look at before that.” This is a lie. Trump has been quoted supporting the invasion beforehand and even afterward. Nobody has produced any evidence of Trump contradicting his support for the war before it started. His line to Lauer was transparently ridiculous – how could a 2004 interview supply evidence of having opposed a war that began in 2003? But Lauer did not try even a single follow-up.
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The average undecided voter is getting snippets of news from television personalities like Lauer, who are failing to convey the fact that the election pits a normal politician with normal political failings against an ignorant, bigoted, pathologically dishonest authoritarian.
Emphasis mine. Matt Lauer failed the profession of journalism, and he failed America tonight. This is not a fucking game, this is not a fucking horserace. This is an election between, as Chait writes, a normal politician with normal political failings against an ignorant, bigoted, pathologically dishonest authoritarian.
Chris Matthews was quick to defend Lauer after this pathetic display, saying that if Matt Lauer “calls Trump a liar”, then Lauer will be accused of expressing an opinion and not being impartial. That’s a fucking disgrace, and laughable coming from Matthews, who frequently spends most of his show demanding that his guests buy into whatever frame Matthews has constructed that day.
Anyone who is afraid of calling out lies when they are interviewing someone who wants to be president is not qualified to conduct that interview. Anyone who isn’t prepared to challenge the assertions of someone who wants to be president, because they’re afraid of what the big mean old political parties will say about them has no business calling themselves a journalist.
Matt Lauer should stick to empty celebrity interviews and cooking with celebrity chefs, because he clearly isn’t ready for the responsibility NBC gave him tonight.
(via wilwheaton)
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