Journalists reacted with disbelief on Wednesday night when NBC anchor Matt Lauer failed to fact check Donald Trump on his claim he did not support the Iraq war in 2002.
“The main thing is: I have great judgment,” Trump said in response to a question as what he has done in his life that prepared him to send America’s men and women into harm’s way. “I heard Hillary Clinton say I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq. You can look at Esquire magazine from 2004. You can look at before that. And I was against the war in Iraq, I said it’s going to totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has. It’s been a disastrous war. And perhaps almost as bad was the way Barack Obama got out. That was a disaster.”
According to fact checks by several news organizations — particularly BuzzFeed and others like PolitiFact —Trump did, in fact, support the Iraq war in 2002. But Lauer, co-host of NBC’s “Today” show, immediately moved on, asking Trump about his temperament.
“So Lauer didn’t correct Trump on his record about Iraq?” The Washington Post’s Phil Rucker tweeted.
The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof wrote that the forum was “an embarrassment to journalism,” while his colleague Paul Krugman wrote that “everyone knew this would happen,” but Lauer didn’t “have a follow-up planned” for Trump’s answer.
“I hate media-on-media violence, but Trump’s support for the invasion of Iraq has been. .. rather well documented. No Lauer follow-up?” wrote Yahoo News’ Olivier Knox.
I was watching this frenzied meltdown in real time on Twitter last night and loving every minute of it:
Kinda fun watching lefty journos lament what Republicans have had to put up with forever. https://t.co/HsLWAhg6UO
— SFK (@stephenkruiser) September 8, 2016
What the media is really mad at is that Lauer deviated from the standard biased modus operandi that they employ for any forum or debate during the post-Labor Day presidential election season. They relentlessly (and often erroneously) fact-check the Republican candidate while letting the Democrat say things like what Obama said about Russia in 2012. That brain-dead line was swooned over by most in the MSM, by the way.
Look, any time you can irritate both Nick Kristof and Paul Krugman on the same day, you’re doing your job well.
That the media is so interested in the “fact” of something Trump said as a private citizen after a year of dancing around Mrs. Bill’s numerous faux pas as secretary of State perfectly illustrates just how corrupt they are in the heat of an election. The outrage directed at Lauer merely displays their bias for all to see. It is difficult to determine whether they simply don’t care if the public knows they’re biased or if they just think the public is stupid.
OK, it’s not that difficult.
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