The media sure knows how to run with a thinly sourced story, don’t they? Shortly after the BuzzFeed article about President Trump allegedly obstructing justice by instructing his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie under oath, most of the media acted like this was an undeniable truth, speculating about what might happen to the president in light of this news. Andrew Klavan explains the liberal media’s irresponsibility and hypocrisy on Monday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show.”
After playing a clip of Brian Stelter interviewing BuzzFeed’s Anthony Cormier and Ben Smith, Klavan points out that they dodged every question without confirming the authenticity of their article.
“So, these guys got nothing! So, Brian Stelter, before they come on, he announces that he’s going to have them on, he tweets that he’s going to have them on his show, which is called ‘Reliable Sources,'” Klavan said. “So I tweeted ‘That’s great! Shouldn’t you change the name of your show for this episode?’ And Stelter tweets back ‘Well, shouldn’t you watch the show first?’ The answer is ‘no’ because the problem is not the mistake. The problem is not that they ran with a false story.”
He continued: “The problem is the bias. When I talked about this on this show, what I said was you know, one of the things that bothers me about this story, and obviously I’m not a news-man I’m a commentator, I’m giving you my opinion, but what I said was, ‘What bothers me is the FBI clearly overstepped its brief in their investigation of Donald Trump and these leaks are obviously intended to cover that up to re-frame an unconstitutional breach by our intelligence services and spying’ – amazingly spying on a presidential campaign, which is absurd.”
“The problem is the press is not covering that story and it didn’t even occur to them to wonder whether that was going on because that story doesn’t exist in their minds, because they’re all Democrats and there’s no one there to say to them, ‘Hey, maybe this is a set-up by the FBI. They’re trying to cover-up. It’s overstepping the constitution,”’ said Klavan. “There’s nobody there to say it so they don’t cover it. That’s the problem. The problem is not that they talked about the BuzzFeed story. The problem is they had no context because they only see everything from one side.”
Video and transcript below:
So, the House majority whip, James Clyburn the Democrat, said, “as long as you say ‘if this is true’ you’re covered, you’re covered.” Well if it’s true that James Clyburn is a child molester than that would be evil. If it’s true that he cheats on his wife, that would be a terrible thing…Of course, that doesn’t give you cover to say, “If it’s true” if the story is unreliable.
But this is not the problem, the problem is not that the story is unreliable. Understand that it is the 24/7 news cycle. To add to this, Robert Mueller, in an extraordinary moment, came out and said this story is not true! So now the thing goes down the drain, now the ship sinks and they’re stuck with all these “if true” stories, right? And Brian Stelter has the reporter who covered it, Anthony Cormier on with Ben Smith, the guy who runs Buzzfeed, and listen to this interview! He asks them all these questions and they just dodge them!
Stelter: “Can we just ask about documents, like the dossier? Anthony, you said on CNN on Friday that you had not seen the documents you described in the story. Jason Leopold said on MSNBC, “We’ve seen documents.” Can you explain that to us?”
Cormier: “Yeah, I can’t really get into, like, the details there.”
So, these guys got nothing! So, Brian Stelter, before they come on, he announces that he’s going to have them on, he tweets that he’s going to have them on his show, which is called Reliable Sources. So I tweeted “That’s great! Shouldn’t you change the name of your show for this episode?” And Stelter tweets back “Well, shouldn’t you watch the show first?” The answer is “no” because the problem is not the mistake. The problem is not that they ran with a false story. The problem is the bias. When I talked about this on this show, what I said was you know, one of the things that bothers me about this story, and obviously I’m not a news-man I’m a commentator, I’m giving you my opinion, but what I said was “What bothers me is the FBI clearly overstepped its brief in their investigation of Donald Trump and these leaks are obviously intended to cover that up to re-frame an unconstitutional breach by our intelligence services and spying – amazingly spying on a presidential campaign, which is absurd.
The problem is the press is not covering that story and it didn’t even occur to them to wonder whether that was going on because that story doesn’t exist in their minds, because they’re all Democrats and there’s no one there to say to them “Hey, maybe this is a set-up by the FBI. They’re trying to cover-up. It’s overstepping the constitution.” There’s nobody there to say it so they don’t cover it. That’s the problem. The problem is not that they talked about the BuzzFeed story. The problem is they had no context because they only see everything from one side.