Leslie Stahl’s embarrassing and
shameful performance on 60 Minutes
this weekend is what we should expect from shallow media types who fail to arm
themselves with “facts” when confronted with an even more shallow blowhard who
has no interest in the facts at all. We are told that this was a “major coup”
for Stahl to get an interview with Donald Trump, but one is left wondering why
the producers just didn’t dump the segment altogether. As Variety pointed out, Stahl’s interview had little less effect than a
typical Trump campaign rally, and in her arrogance and conceit Stahl was
completely outmatched and unprepared for Trump. Back in the “old” days, Mike
Wallace or Dan Rather would have been prepared and intolerant of Trump’s obfuscation
and lies. When confronted by Trump’s ignorance on climate change and
challenging her’s, Stahl couldn’t even come up with something off the top of
her head like “Scientists have found that climate change is occurring at a much
faster rate than in the past due to man-made interventions, and failure to
address the issue now will only make it more difficult if not impossible to
stop its devastating effects on life as we know it.” I would have like to have heard
Trump’s response to that.
Stahl could have also pointed out
that rich people like Trump may believe, like Prince Prospero and his
aristocratic friends in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death,” that his
money can “buy” him and his precious spawn “safety” from the world of hate and
inequality that he and his kind wish to create (and already have to a large
extent), but he cannot escape the consequences of his policies for long (see
the recent doubling-down on tax cuts for the rich and what that means for the
future), and there will be a price to be paid and someone will be held accountable
for it. When people in the future speak the name of Trump, it will occupy the
same “pantheon” of other disreputable historical figures; let’s not forget that
millions of Germans were “fans” of Hitler and his racist policies and international
belligerence— or the fact that Americans who are fans of Hitler also tend to be
fans of Trump as well. And Trump obviously doesn’t care who his “fans” are, as
long as they are his “fans.”
It is clear that Trump thought he
could bully Stahl, no doubt because she was just a “woman,” and she allowed him
to do it by playing by his rules. I would have preferred to see someone like John
Oliver, Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O'Donnell have a crack at this fraud, since
they seem to know their “stuff”; but then again, Trump would not have permitted
himself to be put at a disadvantage by being tormented by people who could
expose him to his face and to the world. Stahl should have just stuck to a few
topics that she was prepared to discuss, and if he didn’t want to discuss them
truthfully, then just cut him off, tell him he was wasting viewers’ time and go
on the next topic—or better yet, just call it a day. Jake Tapper did it with
Stephen Miller when he refused to stay on topic, even cutting off Miller’s mike
and having him escorted off the premises by security when he refused to leave—which
must have galled Motor-Mouth Miller to no end being made to look the fool, especially
since he was unable to get the last word in. So what if Trump had just walked
off the set; sure his “fans” would have applauded, but most other viewers would
have seen a man who had gotten his richly deserved comeuppance. Instead, Trump
just proved once again that it is many in the media who are “fake,” not the
news itself. Unless of course we are talking about Fox News; then both the
media and the “news” is fake.
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