The Right Resistance: Should blatant establishment media bias deter Trump and Vance from talking?

If you’ve ever wondered – and I’m guessing if you’re like me, you’ve pondered it a lot – why decent American citizens’ skepticism of the major establishment media is so high, all you needed to discover the answer was to watch last Sunday morning as Republican vice presidential candidate (and Donald Trump running mate) J.D. Vance appeared on NBC’s

“Meet the Press” and was grilled, literally, by supposedly impartial show host/moderator Kristen Welker regarding his views on the undisputable immigration crisis plaguing our nation, among other things.

If I didn’t know better – and to confess, I didn’t actually see the entire segment, just a particularly relevant portion dealing with the ultimate “Duh!” issue of our time – I would say Vance agreed to go on TV just to allow a member of cackling Kamala Harris’s spin-team to feed him biased questions, correct him in mid-sentence and generally lend the impression that the Ohioan was lying and obscuring the truth.

Most politicians, at least the ones who aren’t Democrats and who are semi-interested in disseminating reality, don’t shy away from tough interviews. It’s always seemed that hard questions bring out the best in those who are tasked with representing us, should know the issues as thoroughly as anyone who poses the question and isn’t afraid to be challenged in the most revealing of ways – and is therefore something to be welcomed.

But there’s a difference between being a tough interview and trapping a guest in a corner like a boxer two weight classes above his opponent’s and the referee just allowing the bigger contender to flail away at the poor undersized soul until the bell rings to stop the carnage.

That’s not a fair fight. Those running for president this year – and this includes both major parties’ candidates – should be given the treatment by journalists who enjoy getting to the bottom of an issue and exposing potential weaknesses in logic or facts.

Nonetheless, the reception Vance endured from NBC’s Kristin Welker was especially unfair. In an article titled “Vance: The Root Cause Of The Immigration Crisis Is That Kamala Harris Refuses To Do Her Job As Border Czar”, Tim Hains reported at Real Clear Politics the other day:

“NBC's Kristen Welker grilled Sen. J.D. Vance about the Trump campaign's ‘mass deportation’ plan during an interview Sunday on ‘Meet The Press.’

“KRISTEN WELKER: Another big topic in this race is immigration. There has been a lot of discussion about Donald Trump's plans for mass deportation. According to one estimate, more than 11 million U.S. citizens live in households with mixed immigration status, including more than five million children. If you and former President Trump were elected, would you separate families as a part of your mass deportation effort?

“SEN. JD VANCE: Well, we have to start with the foundational issue here, which is we have 25 million illegal aliens in this country right now because Kamala Harris has refused to do her job.

“KRISTEN WELKER: I have, very quickly, DHS says it's much lower, it's closer to eight million. Where do you get the 25 million from?

“SEN. JD VANCE: Well, I think the 25 million are the people that should've been deported that maybe weren't deported, plus you add another 12 to 15 million that have come in since Kamala Harris. Look, whatever the number is –”

This is only a brief snippet of the conversation, yet you get the picture. In an interview on a topic that should be pretty much cut and dried for anyone in the country who’s kept up on the illegal immigration conundrum, it’s irrelevant to the average viewer whether the number is eight million (the number that DHS supposedly supports) compared with 25 million (the total J.D. Vance offered). No, if the government is admitting that at least eight million illegal aliens are squatting on U.S. soil without permission, that’s a problem.

Isn’t it?

Those are eight million human souls who weren’t planned for from the outset; they need housing, food, services, police protection, police enforcement, utilities services, infrastructure support, medical care, education and other basic needs fulfilled that can’t be accounted for by the authorities tasked with administering them.

After all, they’re illegal. And a good many of them, as statistics show, are criminals who head north specifically to infiltrate the country and cause problems. Our leftist friends in the Democrat party and on Facebook make it sound as though every alien who breaks into the country does so out of a lack of basic necessities for himself or their families. Yet they’re still able to make the journey and figure out a means to remain here indefinitely.

This is the crux of the issue, not the number of aliens who actually reside here, or whether they live with relatives or American citizens and their relations would be inconvenienced if they were uprooted and sent back in the direction from which they came.

Besides, isn’t it the media’s job to explore issues, determine the parties’ respective positions and present the information to the public without making it seem like the politician who’s being interviewed is guilty of lying or distorting the truth? The media itself has been horrible in presenting the political questions to the American people in a fair and balanced manner.

Media watchers come to expect this from Welker the establishment stiff, who seems unwilling to let conservatives answer questions without unduly injecting herself into the conversation after taking criticism for allowing Donald Trump to present his side of the “stolen election” story after the 2020 vote count. Welker isn’t about to let it happen again!

But beyond the bias implications of the modern establishment media, should Republicans be subjecting themselves to appearing on shows like “Meet the Press” and facing an interrogation from “reporters” who are practically on the payroll of the DNC?

For his part, Donald Trump has maintained, from the very beginning, a policy of being willing to talk with anyone at anytime regardless of who it is or what media outlet they represent. Trump grants an interview, gives the crossexaminer as good as he gets and then, if necessary, points out afterwards to his rally audiences if the questioner is openly antagonistic.

Usually, they are.

Trump has long held the philosophy that bad publicity is better than no publicity at all, and the Republican nominee has consistently honed his strategy of attracting media coverage, often to his detriment. It’s my theory, for example, that the reason why Trump has such a difficult time improving his approval ratings despite widely popular policies and an opposition that isn’t well-regarded at all, is because the establishment media has erected a virtually impenetrable barrier to his making headway with his kneejerk naysayers.

The Never Trump contingent developed years ago and, despite a number of “converts” to the MAGA cause this time around – like Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – still continues to push Trump away regardless of the Republican’s attempts to build a coalition.

Trump’s intra-party enemies felt that he shouldn’t be given a third chance at the GOP nomination because he was simply too off-putting, and that he would never be able to expand the “tent” no matter what he did because his haters would either vote against him – or basically refuse to participate. Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley based their campaigns on capturing the anti-Trump vote. The only problem is there weren’t enough Republican voters who felt this way.

J.D. Vance appears to have a similar philosophy to Trump’s in that he’s been a regular guest on establishment media news shows and has developed a reputation for deftly fielding questions and not backing down on the major points regarding MAGA agenda policy. If J.D. was searching for a situation where he’d be able to duck the tough confrontations, he figured wrong in joining with Trump.

The real mystery is whether Republicans should avoid possible damage with antagonistic media bookings – like the Democrats do – or if they’re being given credit for showing up and providing answers on issues, even if the media interrogators slant the facts like Welker did last weekend.

The other side of the coin involves the obvious avoid-the-media-at-all-costs position which may shield politicians from facing uncomfortable situations but doesn’t do much to keep the public informed. The Founding Fathers purposely fortified the First Amendment with virtually unlimited protections for the press and protest and free speech with the intention of encouraging debate in the public arena.

The great men behind the founding documents never anticipated that the press wouldn’t do their jobs. But then again, a lot of things haven’t turned out the way the founders envisioned, have they?

I think Trump and Vance would ultimately benefit by making themselves available to most interviewers, which runs the risk of encountering the Kristen Welkers of the world who wouldn’t cut them a fair break even if they were motivated to do it, which they clearly aren’t. I’m guessing most Americans appreciated hearing about plans and agendas and rationales and supporting evidence for policies that will impact their lives. Kudos to Trump and Vance for making it possible.

The ones who don’t are already Democrat supporters. They care about “joy” and might even prefer to smuggle as many illegal foreigners inside the borders to improve “culture” or make up for past injustices, etc. They couldn’t care at all about American exceptionalism, property rights, elections integrity or their impacts on the middle class’s standard of living.

Let Kamala Harris go on to Welker’s show and have the host toss out a softball like, “Tell me about the amount of ‘joy’ you intend to bring to the White House? And, do you enjoy ice cream as much as Joe Biden does?”

Opinions vary as to how much Donald Trump and J.D. Vance should appear in the establishment media – or if they should bother granting interviews to unfriendly interrogators at all. The media isn’t the Republicans’ friend, but the alternative, it seems evident, is much worse than trying to control the dialogue completely.

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