FOX used this trick long ago, and – to be fair, even the New York Times fell into the trap, especially during the Clinton years, of “covering the story.” It is the old “people are saying” thing. It could be a story such as “Hundreds of people in the know say that Nicolle Wallace is embarrassingly in love with a guy who writes at Political Flare” and the story may be entirely untrue (as far as you know) but the media then covers “the coverage,” because “so many people are saying,” see how that goes? It is a pernicious thing because “covering the coverage” always repeats the underlying theory, making it more credible to readers with better things to do with their time than track down the history of each story.

Trump has probably always used the technique. But it was his “go-to” method to insert what he thinks into a conversation, “Some people say that I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize…” as but one example. With respect to Trump, it is more true to say that even more people say there is a writer at Political Flare that will get a Nobel Peace prize before Donald Trump, probably about 81 million people can agree with that statement. Neither statement has anything to do with who will win the Nobel Peace Prize, yet it gets repeated.

Jen Psaki came in as press secretary with a few different overall missions in her approach (and we’re sure it was a decision made by the entire White House communications team), and one was to simply never get caught in that trap. We try hard not to condescend to the White House press corps because as a general rule, they are some of the best reporters are earth. And yet some on the Right have the technique so ingrained that they cannot imagine a world where “Some people say” is not a legitimate question. Psaki keeps pslapping them for it but it just won’t take.

We present the latest example: (Apologies for our inability to name the reporter, surprising enough, it can be difficult to identify the specific reporter (except Doocy, who is a unique dunce and thus identifiable):

REPORTER: “Some senators who are criticizing the president and vice-president, who have not to date made an in-person visit to the southwest border.”

PSAKI: “Who are those?”

REPORTER: “Those who have criticized…”

PSAKI (2nd time): “Like who?”.

REPORTER: “There have been lots of people who have criticized the fact that they have not made a trip to the border yet.”

PSAKI (3rd time): “Like who?”

“Criticism from those in the Republican party, criticism from others.”

At this point, the average Irish Setter realizes it is not going to get its treat and moves on to a tennis ball. Thus it is that Psaki answered her own question, meaning delivering a White House talking point, without addressing anything about “those who have criticized.”

PSAKI: “Well, I don’t know who I’m responding to, but I will say that the president’s focus is…”

According to Crooks and Liars, said reporter had been madly thumbing through her phone to find some kind of name, identify someone who might have said something, which – since this happens daily, might have been a great use of her own time prior to getting pspoon fed in front of the world three times:

REPORTER: “Just the other day, one of the senators held a press conference, where that was a major criticism,”

Oh, for FS!

PSAKI: “ONE of the senators.”

REPORTER: “Senator Rick Scott.”

And that is when Psaki unloaded the cargo hold:

“Well, the president’s focus, and the vice-president’s focus is on solutions. And what we’ve seen over the past several months is that while we came in and saw that there was little preparation for what was going to be a surge of migrants at the border, what we’ve done since then is massively reduced the number of children who are at border patrol facilities, from over 5,000 to under 1,000, the number’s probably even lower than that now. And massively reducing the number of hours these children are spending at these facilities,”

Amazingly, what with modern communication ability, no one needs to send a person on a horse to deliver news from the border. It actually is possible to manage the situation from the White House, just like it’s possible to manage a raid on Bin Laden from the White House. But just for fun, Jen kept psplaining her talking points:

“So, our focus is working through the inter-agency process, pressing to eliminate bureaucracy, and making sure that we’re taking steps that treat them in a humane and moral way, and we’re less worried about press conferences or political games that are being played by some.”

Jen spends at least five to ten minutes of her time in press conferences near every day attempting to teach the same lesson and the press refuses to listen. She would have better luck attempting to teach the chair to sit on two legs. Sad.

Reporter: What you say to those that are criticizing the president and vice president who have not to date made an in person visit to the southwest border?

Psaki: Who?

Reporter: Lots of people?

Psaki: Like who?

Reporter: Republicans. pic.twitter.com/Al564BclCj

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) May 14, 2021

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak