A little late to this argument wouldn’t you say?
The Resurgent‘s Erick Erickson, previously the Editor-in-Chief of RedState who disinvited GOP frontrunner Donald Trump from his RedState Gathering last August, is now blaming the media for Trump’s success.
Forget that Erickson is part of THE MEDIA but here’s what he has to say:
He says he always believed that a candidate with a “standing so small” would never benefit from media attention.
Enter Trump stage right.
“I was flat out wrong,” Erickson admits in a new essay published Monday.
He goes on to preposterously blame the media.
“I have so naively thought the media could not create candidates. But Donald Trump’s campaign is a media created phenomenon. What makes it worse is that the media denies it at all costs, unwilling to admit what they have done. Certainly, Donald Trump tapped into grievances percolating beneath the surface of American politics, but the media’s amplification and maximization of Trump’s airtime is something no other candidate has gotten.”
He writes, “Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders nor Ted Cruz get live CNN coverage of their campaign planes landing.”
Memo to Erickson: All the candidates get relentlessly covered.
Back in April of last year, there was a media stampede toward her in Iowa when her “Scooby” van pulled to the back of the building instead of the front. Reporters looked like fools as they chased the van behind the building. Especially that guy in orange pants. MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts remarked, “Guy in orange pants is pretty quick!”
But hey, it’s their job so they did it.
Both Hillary and Ted (a.k.a. Lyin’ Ted) are routinely asked to appear on TV. Sometimes they do — Hillary has appeared on MSNBC and CNN for sit-down interviews. So has Bernie for that matter — on MSNBC where he got hugged by Rachel Maddow (who made things fair by also hugging Hillary). He’s also appeared on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, where he graciously got spoofed as a semi-senile old man by comedian Larry David.
Hillary, meanwhile, has relentlessly declined to appear on the Sunday morning political talk shows, although earlier in the month she appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper. She, too, appeared on SNL, as has your buddy Trump where he danced the night away. Tapper didn’t hug Hillary on his program, but in March he caught grief for giving Hillary a peck on the cheek, which set off an alarming trend of kisses among moderators and candidates.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper recently asked Ted to appear on his program — Ted declined. He’d already dragged his wife and little girls out on stage in a CNN Town Hall with Cooper. He prefers Fox News Sunday.
Instead of bitching at the media, perhaps Erick ought to bitch at his candidate about why he keeps saying no. Or blame his boneheaded move of bringing on Carly Fiorina as his running mate before coming remotely close to sealing the deal.
Or maybe bitch at him about why he’s so unlikable.
Even a 10-year-old boy at a weekend campaign event felt the need to shout at him: “You suck.”
But the media? Erickson, please.