Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 02:33 am
This is the problem with Republicans. They actually expect reporters not to question them or call them out on what they see as inaccuracies.
Here is a bit of flashback for you. Mitt Romney was being questioned by reporters for stating that he is going to Washington, D.C. to be our president free of any agenda of lobbyist. He stated, “There are no lobbyists running my campaign.”
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Here’s the video:
The AP’s Glen Johnson named a lobbyist close to Romney, and the two tussled as Romney attempted to explain that while this lobbyist was an adviser, he was not running the campaign. The reporter wasn’t having that.
But the part that got my attention (as captured on what looks to be a cell phone by a someone who appears to be a Ron Paul supporter based on the YouTube upload by Urban Warfare Channel that is tagged” We all know Romney is full of shit. RON PAUL 2012″) was after the q and a, when Romney’s Traveling Press Sec. Eric Fehrnstrom approached the reporter to tell him to not be so argumentative with the candidate.
In what world is it “professional” for the press to not ask sometimes-argumentative questions? It’s not as if he called him a name, for heaven’s sake. And let us not forget that Mitt Romney is running for President. He and his campaign manager may wish to familiarize themselves with the treatment our current President gets from the press, and if that doesn’t educate them, perhaps they should watch Fox News interview the president.
Yes, that’s a false equivalency as Fox News doesn’t argue facts or semantics, but rather their own reality – but the point remains the same. If the press’ job is to make the candidate look good in public, if that is the Romney campaign’s idea of their job, then we have larger problems than whether or not Romney has lobbyists “running” his campaign.
The press is there to ask the questions the people want to know the answers to, they are there to ask questions that inform us about who this candidate is and what they really stand for. They are not there to make any candidate or president look good.
If Romney can’t handle the heat of some push back on his convenient usage of semantics to cover the truth, how exactly would he handle being president? We will go back to the Bush-era tactics when the press was not allowed to ask certain questions?
These are but small reminders of what a Republican administration has in store for the people. But of course, you won’t know about it because the press won’t be reporting on it, just as they failed to report on the Bush era tactics lest they be kicked out of the pool.
Update: Video was posted today, but as noted in the comment section was from 2008. The post has been updated to reflect the proper date.
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
