Posted on 01/27/2021 8:23:12 AM PST by Kaslin
Every single Republican lawmaker and figurehead should be required to watch the Rand Paul clip as a clinic for how to take on the left-wing media.
Rand Paul’s patience ran out this week when he made an appearance on ABC with George Stephanopoulos and the latter exchanged journalistic inquiry for partisan hackery. The ensuing fight, however, was a case study in what the media has become and how all conservatives who hit the airwaves ought to take them on.
Rather than pose legitimate questions to the Kentucky senator, Stephanopoulos, who made his money as a Clinton-era Democratic operative before jumping over to the world of “objective journalism,” assumed one of the corporate media’s favorite stances. Let’s call it “media antagonism.”
It isn’t about asking the tough questions. Hard-hitting questions from a journalist are good, although they should be applied to both sides. No, this problem occurs when so-called journalists assume Democrats’ narrative to be indisputably true, frame those partisan talking points as good-faith questions, and then expect conservative interviewees to accept the faulty premises in their responses. Consider the exchange between Stephanopoulos and Paul.
“This election was not stolen. Do you accept that fact?” Stephanopoulos began, taking sides right off the bat. Notice how, first, he echoed Democrats’ position about a controversial topic, and then assumed it to be true in asking if the GOP senator accepted “that fact.”
Paul didn’t fall for it. Instead, he deconstructed the question, noting that while he voted with other members of Congress to certify the results of the Electoral College vote, “the debate over whether or not there was fraud should occur.” Paul proceeded to make the case that fraud did occur by giving examples from his state and others.
Stephanopoulos didn’t like that. He cut off the senator’s argument to offer more Democratic talking points — “No election is perfect,” for instance — that ignored Paul’s valid objections. “Can’t you just say the words, ‘This election was not stolen’?” Stephanopoulos said with “repeat after me” paternalism.
Paul, again refusing to forfeit nuance and join the leftist chorus, pushed back. “What I would suggest is that if we want greater confidence in our elections — and 75 percent of Republicans agree with me — is that we do need to look at election integrity, and we do need to see if we can restore confidence in the elections.”
Stephanopoulos then called Donald Trump and his voters liars. “Well, 75 percent of Republicans agree with you because they were fed a big lie by President Trump and his supporters that said the election was stolen. Why can’t you say, ‘President Biden won a legitimate and fair election’?” Say it. Just say it.
The cage match continued in the same pattern with the pundit in one corner and the senator in the other, but Paul wasn’t afraid to say what needed to be said:
George, where you make a mistake is that people coming from the liberal side like you, you immediately say everything is a lie instead of saying there are two sides to everything. Historically, what would happen is if I said that I thought there was fraud, you would interview someone else who said there wasn’t, but now you insert yourself in the middle and say that the absolute fact is that everything I’m saying is a lie. … I won’t be cowed by people who say, ‘Oh, you’re a liar.’ That’s the problem with the media today is they say all Republicans are liars, and everything we say is a lie. There are two sides to every story. Interview somebody on the other side, but don’t insert yourself into the story to say we’re all liars because we think there’s some fraud in the election that needs to be fixed.
“There are not two sides to the story,” the media antagonist declared. “This has been looked at in every single state. The results were certified in every single state.”
“George, you’re forgetting who you are,” Paul concluded. “You’re forgetting who you are as a journalist if you think there’s only one side. You’re inserting yourself into the story to say I’m a liar because I want to look at election fraud.”
Paul took Stephanopoulos to task, and it wasn’t that hard. When conservatives come to understand that most inquiries from the corporate media are based on false assumptions, they can successfully push back by questioning the premises of all the questions. It was beautiful when Newt Gingrich did it in 2012, and it’s beautiful when Paul does it now.
Paul isn’t the only one. Sen. Marco Rubio took on a media antagonist this week when he rejected Chris Wallace’s question about whether impeaching Trump would be “useful” for keeping him out of future office. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did the same when he called out a CNN “reporter” for following up her simple question with partisan grandstanding:
“So are you going to give a speech, or are you going to ask a question?”
“With all due respect, governor, I’m trying to finish my question.”
“No, you’re giving a speech. You asked a question.”
Again, it was beautiful.
What many Americans have realized but not enough politicians have fought against is that some of the biggest media hotshots at the helm of the corporate information machine are not good-faith actors digging to unearth the heart of today’s story. They’re overt partisans whose perspectives are shaped by the Democrats’ narrative de jour.
They compulsively peddle the left’s lingo, and their questions drip with leftist rhetoric. If it isn’t Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace having a conversation that sounds like dialogue straight out of an Ibram X. Kendi fantasy, it’s Stephanopoulos — or Jake Tapper or Chuck Todd or Chris Cuomo or Don Lemon — begging the question.
Despite the phrase’s popular but incorrect usage, “begging the question” does not mean “raising the question.” If journalists actually raised questions, that would be great, but “begging the question” is to assume an argument to be incontrovertible fact without proving it. It is the epitome of circular reasoning: Trump supporters are racists because they support Trump, who is a racist.
While this type of statement is ubiquitous in today’s average prime-time newscast, it is a logical fallacy. It uses “B,” Trump is a racist,” as support for “A,” “Trump supporters are racists,” without proving “B.” On-air exchanges are then framed around “A” — as in, “What is the best way to de-program all the racists who voted for Trump?” — without ever proving the underlying faulty premise.
Conservative politicians who go on air and dance around the language rather than expose the fallacy do so to the detriment of themselves and their party, not to mention the broader American discourse.
For Paul, exposing the fallacy meant refusing to legitimize Stephanopoulos’s bogus framing that reduced the complexities of the 2020 election — in which laws were changed last-minute by unelected actors, counting irregularities emerged, mail-in ballots resulted in voter fraud, dead people voted, and countless other problems arose — to whether Republicans can accept the “fact” that the election wasn’t “stolen.”
Stephanopoulos and his Democratic media cronies have a habit of conflating conversations about voter fraud and how to remedy election integrity to the radical Capitol demonstrators who cling to the notion that Trump won in a landslide victory but had his presidential post stolen, and then they talk themselves in circles about it.
This media antagonism, however, doesn’t begin and end with the 2020 election. Its instigators do this with every topic: abortion, immigration, health care, religious liberty, LGBT issues, school choice — you name it.
Every single Republican lawmaker and figurehead should be required to watch the Paul clip as a clinic for how to take on the left-wing media and then refuse to answer any more media hacks who habitually beg every question. If conservatives and their ideas are ever going to prevail, we must reject falsehoods and expose fallacies — and in the process, unmask today’s journalists as the unserious pundits they really are.
Stephanopolis is such a sissy
Snuffalupagus has always been a Democrat operative, even if he is faking being a journalist.
Rand did well, I just wish he would’ve asked George to “say the words - There was no Russian collusion.”
George should say he is OK with an illegitimate Pres___ent.
Bkmk
The missing component is, that not 3% of Republicans have the rhetorical skills that Rand Paul displayed in that particular interview.
Rand won his struggle session with Red Guard Steffie.
Rand has been hitting it out of the park. This and his call for a vote in the Senate on the impeachment
The missing component is, that not 3% of Republicans have the integrity to want to win the debate.
They are craven, corrupt politicians, in it for the money and power, and nothing else.
I thought it was rather anemic at best. He was asked if he thought the election was stolen, he said that there were questions about it, but he respected the electorial collage. Heres how he should have asked it. “HELL YEAH IT WAS STOLEN,” then go after ABC News and Snuffleupyourass.
.
“ Hey George. If you had a time machine to go back to the resurrection of Christ, would you? Of course you would. Well on Nov. 3rd Michigan had a Easter times 10,000 when more than 10,000 people rose from the dead, some as far back as the civil war rose from the grave to vote for Biden. Way isn’t thst news George?”
“Hey George! Why are judgs dismissing a the Trump cases on technicalities and not on the evidence?”
“Hey George! Why wont the states let anyone examine the mail in ballots to verify if they are legitimate?”
“Hey George! Why were over 200,000 Wisconsin ballots accepted without signatures or with home addresses against Wisconsin constitutional law?”
“Hey George! Why are there people in Georga on video pulling tubs of ballots and ripunning them over and over and over again when they kicked all the Republicans out at the same time Biden started taking the lead from Trump. Why are you Mr. Journalist interested in that, huh George?”
“Hey George! Why was Penn. law violated by the Secretary of state, the Governor and courts to allow mail in and late ballots erasing a 700,000 vote lead of Trump? Name one other time in history where this happened and was acceptable?” This was more than when JFK stole the election from Nixon!”
“Hey George! Why is election theft by the left acceptable.”
“... asked George to “say the words - There was no Russian collusion.”
G1!!
I would not have been as nice as Rand Paul was. I no longer have patience with commies like George S.
Since you are so smart newbie, tell me what a collage is? As I have no idea.
Good article
Exactly right. Craven, corrupt, with their primary goal of enriching themselves at the public trough. This is true of nearly all politicians, which is why the exceptions are rare and stand out so brightly
It’s a gathering of electors usually pastel.....no glue allowed
“...refuse to answer any more media hacks who habitually beg every question.”
Lord, do I feel comfortable with this. For years I’ve had a mistrust, and sometimes hatred, for the media as it continues on it’s trek to support socialism/liberalism.
“...we think there’s some fraud in the election that needs to be fixed.”
I don’t think he went enough here. We know there has been fraud in the election with just the reported incidents. I had a liberal person ask me the other day if Biden won in his low life efforts as he was not looking for conversation, but an argument. He mentioned he was only in the discussion for justice. He was, of course, trying to get me to commit myself for a challenging action he could then turn on me, personally. But he didn’t expect the truth.
I told him, “I not sure who won and by how much.” You could see the panic in his face. He said in that panic, “Biden won!” I asked him how he knew. “It was certified in congress,” was his parry. I said “so what. What does that have to do with the state’s actions and possible criminalities? Congress only took the information handed them and made a blind call. They do every time. It is done all over the country every day.” He asked for other examples thinking I couldn’t come up with some. I said, “did Gore lose to Bush, did Hilary lose to Trump, want more? And did you notice that both those situations were liberals losing to conservatives that was being complained about by your liberal party to this day more than 20 years later?”
(I had him, he was disarmed) But since this is the most important action the country takes every time, shouldn’t we be sure?” He said, “it’s over, you lost. I said, “there are questions that need to be looked into that may have effected the election. So it’s over, both of us lost as it didn’t hurt the people being elected and the people that did the things they did are still on the street like criminals. It just brutalized the election process which is our way of telling the politicians what we want. If they don’t care, then they don’t have to listen and we are back under King George.” I continued with, “you aren’t in it for justice, just party affiliation with a group of people that don’t want to be equal to you, they want to dominate you. And you think the election was correct? You live in a limited world. One that you have no control over.”
He called me a conspiracy theorist. I laughed and said, “they attacked Christ for his beliefs, but I’m not near that good. I’m just not a fool.” He didn’t want to talk anymore.
Full cycle:
Liberal gets his thoughts in - tries to stop conservative from getting his ideas in, tries to discredit the messenger because he can’t discredit the message, terminate the conversation thinking he’s superior.
Playbook for over 50 years used every time even by amateur hacks. Right out of Alinsky. And as soon as you agree with them and show them what they are actually losing by a faulty process, they fold up like a lawn chair normally trying to get in the last word over their shoulder about you. And these interviews in the thread are just exactly the same.
wy69
This election was stolen Stephanopoulos plays spin doctor.
Rand Paul us about twice as smart as any of his fellows.
Pubs fall for the media shaming every time: “Do you condemn the violence Trump encouraged, and do you think he should be held responsible for it?”
A perfect chance for these blow hards to preen and virtue signal, and they fall for it every time.
Paul is smarter than that.
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