This week’s Liberal Media Scream is breaking the pattern of highlighting over-the-top liberal bias in the media to point out something new on the Washington press stage: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) eagerness to call out double standards.
Since his election as speaker, McCarthy has made no secret that he believes that the Washington press corps is biased and often criticizes Republican leaders for moves it never criticized Democrats for.
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Last week, for example, when a reporter didn’t like McCarthy’s answer to a question, the speaker said: “Let me be very clear and respectful to you. You asked me a question. When I answer it, it’s the answer to your question. You don’t get to determine whether I answer your question or not, OK?”
Then, on Face the Nation, he bristled when host Margaret Brennan criticized his appointment of “election deniers” to committee posts. Noting that she didn’t complain when Democratic deniers of former President Donald Trump’s election got good committee seats, he said, “If you want to hold Republicans to that equation, why don’t you also hold Democrats?”
From Sunday’s interview on CBS’s Face the Nation:
Margaret Brennan: I want to ask you about some of the makeup of your caucus.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy: Yes.
Brennan: According to CBS records, 70% of the House GOP members denied the results of the 2020 election. You put many of them on very key committees: Intelligence, Homeland Security, Oversight. Why are you elevating people who are denying reality like that?
McCarthy: Well, if you look to the Democrats, their ranking member [Jamie] Raskin had the same thing, denied Trump or Bush was in there. Bennie Thompson —
Brennan: Did you see those numbers we just put up there? Seventy percent!
“You asked me a question. When I answer it, it’s the answer to your question. You don’t get to determine whether I answered your question or not, OK? In all respect. Thank you.”
— @SpeakerMcCarthy pic.twitter.com/F8or5D25BX
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) January 25, 2023
McCarthy: Did you also be fair and equal where you looked at Raskin did the same thing, Bennie Thompson, whose a ranking member and was a chair? These individuals were chair of the Democratic Party.
Brennan: I’m asking you, as leader of Kevin McCarthy’s House, why you made these choices? These were your choices.
McCarthy: Yeah, they’re my choices, but they’re the conference choices. But I’m also asking you when you look to see just Republicans — Democrats have done the same thing. So maybe it’s not denying. Maybe it’s the only opportunity they have to have a question about what went on during the election. So if you want to hold Republicans to that equation, why don’t you also hold Democrats? Why don’t you hold Jamie Raskin? Why don’t you hold Bennie Thompson? When Democrats had appointed them to be chair, I never once heard you ask Nancy Pelosi or any Democrat that question when they were in power, in the majority. When they questioned —
Brennan: You’re talking about things going back to 2000, which was a time, I didn’t have this show back then, which is why I’m asking you now about your leadership.
McCarthy: No, no! They were in power last Congress. So why —
Brennan: You’re talking about questions from the 2000 election.
McCarthy: You’re asking me about questions that happened to another Congress.
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Brennan: About these choices you just made, just made. This is your Congress.
McCarthy: These are members who just got elected by their constituents, and we put them into committees. And I’m proud to do it.
Brent Baker, the vice president of research and publications for the Media Research Center, explains our weekly pick: “It’s always refreshing to see a politician push back against a liberal media storyline the journalist presumes is beyond questioning, especially when the journalist is someone so oblivious as Brennan is to her bias.”
Rating: FIVE out of FIVE SCREAMS (CHEERS).
