When is reporting not reporting? When is an interview not an interview? When will ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos going to start conducting honest interviews or unbiased reporting?
The answer to that last question is "never." It's my job today to answer the first two for you with something hopefully a bit more useful and detailed than my knee-jerk response, which was, "When Stephanopoulos is either reporting on conservatives or interviewing a conservative."
Shall we begin?
Before he got himself elected (and reelected and reelected) as the President-Probably-for-Life of Turkey, then-Istanbul mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan once said, “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
The fact that Turkey has continued to hold elections since Erdogan first led Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power in 2002 is surely the triumph of optics over objective reality. No matter how badly Erdogan continues to foul up Turkey's economy or its foreign relations, AKP and Erdogan continue their rule because Turkey long ago stepped off the tram.
In an interview with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) for ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, Stephanopoulos Sparta-kicked Vance off the tram just as the interview was getting good.
During a heated exchange, Vance told Stephanopoulos, "We have a major problem here with administrators and bureaucrats in the government who don't respond to the elected branches." That's what we sometimes call "the Deep State."
Vance continued:
That's a fundamental component of our government, George, that whoever is in charge, agree or disagree with him, you have to follow the rules. If those people aren't following the rules, then of course you've got to fire them, and of course, the president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should. That's the way the Constitution works. It has been thwarted too much by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the past 15 years.
Stephanopoulos leaped, asking with obvious irritation, "The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn't it?"
"The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings," Vance replied, "but if the Supreme Court — and, look, I hope that they would not do this, but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can't fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit."
Vance explained his position further, but Stephanopoulos cut him off with a curt "You didn't say 'military' in your answer, and you've made it very clear you believe the president can defy the Supreme Court," cut off Vance's mic, and "thanked" him for his time.
Stephanopoulos got a soundbite he could edit to smear a Republican and then promptly cut the mic, ending any further discussion. That's not reporting. That's not an interview. That's... well, that's what you expect from a Democrat operative.
Would it kill Stephanopoulos to stop acting like a Democrat operative and conduct himself like an actual journalist just once, or would his head explode, "Scanners"-style, if he merely considered it?
I'm kidding, of course. Stephanopoulos never for one second stopped being a Democrat operative. It's just that for the last 20 years or so, he's done so with an imprimatur of objectivity from ABC News, which is every bit as convincing as David Gest's brief marriage to Liza Minnelli.
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