On Wednesday, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro appeared on Fox’s The First 100 Days with host Martha McCallum and radio host Richard Fowler to discuss the media’s overwrought response to the resignation of Lt. General Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor. Shapiro slammed the media for their hysteria, asserting, “Guys, if you want people to take you seriously, you have to stop setting your hair on fire and running into plate glass windows before you even know what the hell is going on.”
McCallum began by outlining the histrionics of the media, noting Thomas Friedman of The New York Times venting, “We were attacked on Dec.7, 1941, we were attacked on September 11, 2001, and we were attacked on November 8, 2016,” as well as former CBS anchor Dan Rather blustering, “Watergate is the biggest political scandal of my lifetime, until maybe now,” and Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press bloviating, “ . . . one of what is arguably the biggest presidential scandal involving a foreign government since Iran-Contra. Take a breath; hyperbole aside, folks, hunker down, ‘cause this is a class five political hurricane that’s hitting Washington.”
McCallum asked Shapiro, “Ben, what do you make of all that?”
Shapiro replied:
Everybody sounds like a used car salesman trying to hawk an old Chevy. Wow. The level of outrage over something that, we don’t even know what happened yet; I’m still confused as to what Flynn did that was supposed to be the worst thing that ever happened since the Biblical plagues; and between Thomas Friedman, who apparently has the brain power of an overused hair dryer and Dan Rather, the godfather of modern media “fake news, talking about how this is the greatest crisis that we’ve ever seen in modern political history; again, what happened? Should we know what happened before we start to freak out and lose our minds?
McCallum turned to Fowler, pointing out that The New York Times admitted they had no evidence linking President Trump to a nefarious connection with Russia. Fowler replied that the Trump Administration had “circled the wagons, and they haven’t released any information.” He then gave advice to “the Donald”: release the transcripts of Flynn’s conversations to the intelligence committee and “get it over with so you could move on.” He added that Trump would need political capital for his future plans.
McCallum noted that the Flynn story really broke one month ago, then reminded the audience of Barack Obama’s infamous promise to Russian President Medvedev in 2012 that after the election he would have “more flexibility.” She asked Shapiro if Flynn might have made a similar promise to the Russian ambassador.
Shapiro replied: “I think that’s basically the idea; the only difference is President Obama was in the middle of an election cycle and Flynn apparently said a lot of these things after the election cycle was over. It was like three weeks before he was appointed NSA.”
Then he hit the media again:
Richard, you’re giving a lot of advice to Donald Trump, and I agree with a lot of the advice that you’re suggesting for the Trump Administration but some advice for the media: “Guys, if you want people to take you seriously, you have to stop setting your hair on fire and running into plate glass windows before you even know what the hell is going on. You are jumping on every rake in a 300-nile radius before you eve let all the facts out. We can’t take you seriously unless you lay out a series of facts that we can believe, instead of blowing up … The headline on that New York Times piece could easily have been, “Investigation Shows No Causal Links Between Trump Campaign and Russians,” and instead the headline was, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.”
Video below: