Every week, we deliver our picks for the most noteworthy hot air blowers, virtue signalers, and grandstanders in the news.
Possibly to the disappointment of ravenous pundits, the man behind the murder of five journalists in an Annapolis newspaper turned out to have been motivated not by politics but by a personal, and twisted grudge.
This did not impede the rush of Unshuttable-Mouths to turn a tragedy into a statement.
Sean Hannity: Sean didn’t allow a minute to pass.
He was apprised of the Annapolis shooting on air while recording his radio show.
After voicing his initial horror, Sean quickly expressed his desire not to politicize the tragedy.
”I’m not turning this into a gun debate,” he said, before turning surly with the same breath. “I know that’s where the media will be in 30 seconds from now.”
And with the flip of a sentence, Sean jumped to an all-out, baseless accusation — as self-congratulating as it was dishonest — of Rep. Maxine Waters, who last week had encouraged supporters to harass Trump administration officials.
”You know, as I’ve always said, I mean honestly — I’ve been saying now for days that something horrible was going to happen because of the rhetoric. Really Maxine?”
Less than a minute.
Jim Acosta: Like Hannity, pundits on the left also searched the political explanation behind the gruesome actions of a madman. The search, like so many others of its kind these days, has led to Trump.
The president’s habit of assailing the press, though despicable, should not be blamed for the shooting any more than Maxine Waters. But blamed for it it was, and by journalists (who would not necessarily even consider Hannity their peer).
First, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, reporters demanded to hear Trump’s response, with the tacit understanding that silence is to be interpreted as an admission of complicity. “Why are you walking away?” demanded one reporter, as if to say, are you eaten by guilt? Or are you secretly happy?
But topping them all was CNN’s White House correspondent Jim Acosta.
The day after the attack, the president did offer condolences to the five journalists murdered. Journalists, he said, “should be free from fear of attack.”
At this very event, Acosta, standing in the back of the room, a safe distance from the president’s earshot, shouted through cupped hands, “Mr. President, will you stop calling the press enemy of the people?”
OMG!
CNN’s @Acosta repeatedly shouts “Mr. President, will you stop calling the press the enemy of the people” at @realDonaldTrump and is shushed by an onlooker! pic.twitter.com/6eEySyHVNx
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) June 29, 2018
Whether it was a performance or a therapeutic act of personal edification, Acosta’s question seemed to us superfluous. (And the guy in front of him apparently agrees.)
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