Washington Post’s Conservative Columnist Attacks Sanders in Morning Tweetstorm

Jennifer Rubin is a widely respected conservative columnist for the Washington Post, and for years has been the lead writer for the newspapers “Right Turn” blog.  So it is no small thing when she begins to level some very harsh criticisms at the White House Press Secretary.

Apparently fed up (finally) with the lies emanating from the mouth of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Rubin unleashed an epic tweetstorm this morning recommending that members of the press begin to boycott the White House press briefings.

Truthfully, we have never seen anything like this.  Jennifer Rubin is very influential at the Post, and also at MSNBC where she is a nightly contributor.  She is one of Donald Trump’s most vocal and intense conservative critics.  For her — with the backing of the Washington Post — to say these controversial things this morning is no small thing.

It appears that the media wars have taken a new turn as more and more people are completely out of patience with a lying president and his willful accomplices.

Here are all six of Rubin’s amazing tweets, in order they appeared:

In deliberately misleading or passing on misleading information, Sanders is not serving the American people. She is thwarting democratic government and enabling Trump’s attempts to free himself of investigations.

For members of the media, however, the question becomes whether their expression of outrage on Thursday was a momentary spasm or whether they are no longer going to take her seriously.

If a background source repeatedly lied to them, they’d stop using that source. It’s no different with an on-the-record and on-air source. Unless the news conferences are going to be televised with a disclaimer for the audience.

Why put her on camera to mislead them and the American people? There is no purpose to questions if the answer could as easily be a lie as the truth.

So long as press briefings are a platform for Sanders and/or the president simply to make stuff up, the media has no obligation to play along.

The media is obligated to ask the White House for comment on its reports and to relay its statements, but it is not obligated to give Sanders an open mic to accuse them of lying and, worse, to deceive them. Maybe they should just stop showing up.

The outburst on Twitter by Rubin could be a very important development.  Nobody thinks the media, however, will actually stop showing up to hear Sanders repeat Trump’s lies and defend every despicable thing the president does.  

There may be some fallout from this, or it may be ignored. But there is no question that Trump, Giuliani and Sanders have taken their brazen dishonesty to a new level, and more and more people are completely sick of listening to them.

Leo Vidal

I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.