In a story about how friends and allies of Speaker Paul Ryan are disappointed in his unwavering support of GOP presidential contender Donald Trump, a BuzzFeed reporter takes an odd stance about reporters.
Specifically, Washington reporters.
In the piece, political writer McKay Coppins — who has never been a Trump fan — talks about how disappointed people are about Ryan backing Trump and how sorry they feel for him that he has to go through this anguish of backing a man whose behavior he often abhors.
At the conclusion of the story, Coppins exalts Ryan as a “creature of DC” that both Republican and Democratic politicians actually like and respect. He describes him as the “paragon of decency.”
What’s not so decent, says Coppins, even to reporters, is Ryan’s support of Trump.
He doesn’t cite or even blind quote any of these reporters.
But he writes, “To many in Washington — including no small number of reporters — Ryan’s support for Trump is not merely a political miscalculation, but a craven betrayal.”
Trump slashes the “dishonest media” any chance he gets while still quoting journalists and using press reports to his advantage when it suits him.
It’s no secret that Coppins has had what may be the worst relationship with a presidential hopeful in the 2016 election. In 2014 he wrote a hit piece on Trump’s fake candidacy. Trump had Breitbart News campaign surrogate Matthew Boyle write a counter hit piece charging that the Mormon Coppins was ogling women at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. Boyle’s piece claimed Coppins, whom Trump called a “scumbag,” flirted with a waitress named Bianka Pop and ogled at other women while eating Bison burgers.
Now that’s betrayal.
But since when do reporters feel “betrayed” by a politician like Paul Ryan?