Behold: a fine series of excoriations indeed:
How conservatives own the media
Prepare for the interview. Don't accept their premise. Be cool, calm and collected.
JAN 29, 2025
Who owns the media? J.D. Vance.
VICE PRESIDENT VANCE: I don’t want my children to share a neighborhood with people who are not properly vetted, and because I don’t want it for my kids, I'm not going to force any other American citizens kids to do that either.
MARGARET BRENNAN: No. And that was a very particular case. It wasn’t clear if he was radicalized when he got here or while he was living here, but.
VICE PRESIDENT VANCE: I don’t really care, Margaret. I don’t want that person in my country, and I think most Americans agree with me.
Who owns the media? Stephen Miller.
JAKE TAPPER: How are you going to avoid deporting illegal immigrants working in agriculture?
STEPHEN MILLER: Only 1% of alien workers in the entire country work in agriculture. The top destinations for illegal aliens are large cities like New York, like Los Angeles.
JAKE TAPPER: You’re kinda changing this subject.
STEPHEN MILLER: Give me 30 minutes, I’ll go as deep as you want.
Who owns the media? Karoline Leavitt.
REPORTER: Of the 3,500 arrests ICE has made so far since President Trump came back onto office, can you just tell me the numbers? How many have a criminal record versus those who are in the country illegally?
KAROLINE LEAVITT: All of them because they are criminals as far as this administration goes.
There are many other examples of this polite pushback by conservatives, and that is just in the first 10 days of President Trump’s new and improved presidency.
For decades, the media ran roughshod over conservatives who foolishly allowed it. They let reporters set the agenda and frame the facts.
Russiagate was a conspiracy theory concocted by Democrats to cover up Obama using the FBI to spy on Donald Trump. Conservatives blew the chance to flip the table and point out the spying on Trump. Instead of investigating the real scandal of spying, the government investigated an imaginary scandal.
No more. Before they go on television, conservatives are doing their homework and anticipating questions, which they reframe. In Miller’s case, he prepared for the question and also for the follow-up. His reply—“Give me 30 minutes, I’ll go as deep as you want”—was a knockout punch.
In each case, the interviewed conservative kept calm and carried on. By controlling their emotions, they remained in control of the interview.
Scott Jennings has turned his gig as a token conservative on CNN panels into stardom.
Brigitte Gabriel tweeted:
This is so good.
Scott Jennings provokes Maria Cardona into an unhinged outburst over who runs the Executive Branch.
“The Department of Justice does not work for the President!”
“It’s in the Executive Branch!”
Nick Adams tweeted:
CNN’s Ashley Allison walked right into this one with Scott Jennings!
“By your logic. If Joe Biden wanted to go after Donald Trump, the Attorney General should able to do it.”
“They DID go after Donald Trump!”
In his case, Jennings exploits the vacuity of their arguments. Liberals enter the debate with emotions, not facts. They do so because they are never challenged and never developed proper debating skills.
Conservatives have scars, baby. They bring the receipts.
Of course, this goes beyond interviews and commentaries. President Trump sued Disney’s ABC for defamation and won a $15 million settlement with another $1 million for his lawyers. This was hush money to use the network’s phrase from his criminal trial om which New York tried him for a crime for which there was no jail time, no fine and no probation despite 34 verdicts of guilt.
A president’s chances of prevailing in a defamation suit are about as good as Ethiopia landing the first man on Mars. And yet the network paid him off. That has emboldened others to demand satisfaction.
Christopher F. Rufo tweeted, “WINNING: The Washington Post's latest hit piece against me has collapsed. Education editor Adam Kushner admits to publishing four false statements about my work and has officially retracted them. This is a supreme embarrassment for the newspaper and reporter.”
More importantly, it is one less defamation lawsuit Jeff Bezos will have to settle out of court.
We call it winning and it works everywhere. On October 14, 2023, Pierre Poilievre became the first opposition leader in Canada whom Americans have ever been able to name.
He did so by posting on Twitter an interview he gave to a hapless Don Urquhart, editor of the Times Chronicle newspaper in the South Okanagan, while munching an apple.
URQUHART: Uhmm, on the topic, I mean, in terms of your, sort of, strategy currently, you’re obviously taking the populist pathway.
POILIEVRE: What does that mean?
URQUHART: (nervous chuckle) Well, appealing to people’s more emotional levels, I would guess —
POILIEVRE: Whaddaya mean by that? Give me an example.
URQUHART: Certainly you, certainly you tap, ah, very strong ideological language quite frequently.
POILIEVRE: Like what?
URQUHART: Uhh, left wing, y’know, this and that, right-wing, they, you know, I mean, it’s that type of (unintelligible) —
POILIEVRE: I almost never talk about — I never really talk about left or right. I don’t really believe in that.
URQUHART: A lot of people would say that you’re simply taking a page out of the Donald Trump, uh, book —
POILIEVRE: A lot of people? Like which people would say that? (puzzled chomp)
URQUHART: Well, I’m sure — a great many Canadians, but
POILIEVRE: Like who?
URQUHART: Haha, uh, I don’t know who, but
POILIEVRE: Well, you’re the one who asked the question, so you must know somebody.
URQUHART: Heh heh, okay, I’m, I’m sure there’s some out there, but anyways, the point of this question is, why should, why should Canadians trust you with their vote, given … y’know … not, not just the sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page out of Donald Trump’s book, but, also —
POILIEVRE: (incredulous) What are you talking about? What page? What page? Can you gimme a page? Gimme the page.
That is the most famous apple since the one on the head of William Tell’s son.
The media is dying for numerous reasons. They are too large and too cumbersome. They also believe they are entitled to access and a monopoly on the news. They have underestimated their competition, much to the delight and advantage of the smaller and better outlets that have entered the tournament.
But most of all, mainstream reporters do not do their homework and are too obvious with their biases, which renders them ineffective. Conservatives own them now by refusing to play their game by their rules—and smiling as they deliver their knockout punches.
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