Watch CNN Go DEFCON-1 Over Trump Pulling a Fast One On WH Press Corps

by Curtis Houck: This is what the liberal media not being able to control the narrative and what you, the public, know and don’t know. On Thursday afternoon, CNN’s The Lead threw a full-blown conniption after President Donald Trump appeared and then took no questions at a last-minute White House Press Briefing alongside National Border Patrol Council members.

Fill-in host Brianna Keilar immediately seemed bewildered, noting that the President was “pulling the spotlight back to the White House and to his point of view, but it's — he didn't even take questions.”


Never Trump Republican Bill Kristol replied by making the panel’s first of numerous slights against the border patrol, complaining that, when it comes to the government shutdown and Democratic Party efforts to end it: “Donald Trump can resist it by not addressing it, right? It's just — here are the border patrol guys and we need a wall, thank you.”

Keilar and The Daily Beast’s Jackie Kucinich replied with disdain that encapsulated the liberal media-wide temper tantrum:KEILAR: To be clear, this is basically — this is a stunt. I mean, this isn't a briefing. So we thought there was going to — it was billed as a last-minute briefing. That — that was not a briefing, right? A briefing is questions. A briefing is more than just a political stunt which is what we just saw.

KUCINICH: It being held in the briefing room does not a briefing make. There should have been — yeah. This was a — this was a press availability, I guess, maybe, a photo-op, except there were words. I don't know. This was — but this was not — this was not substantive.Kristol and fellow faux Republican Ana Navarro looked to dominate the conversation, so they voiced support for the party they claim to not be a part of and unleashed an ugly aversion to defending and securing our southern border, and standing up for the men and women who protect it: KRISTOL: Here's what it was. Donald Trump couldn't stand that Nancy Pelosi was the center of attention today. He can't stand the fact any other human being could get his or her day in the spotlight so he had to butt in at 4:30 in the afternoon. It's pretty disgraceful, don't you think? New Speaker of the House, a moving moment and he has to have a ludicrous stunt — sorry to drudge on you with some union officials who endorsed him.

ANA NAVARRO: It's exactly what it is. Like I said to you, it’s deflection, it’s distraction. He can't stand it that there's Democratic Woodstock going on in, you know, in the streets of Washington and Capitol Hill, this entire day. There's Democrats running around, you know, almost throwing glitter. There’s happiness. They’re ebullient, and, you know, he can't stand it. He doesn't want to hear about Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. He doesn't want to hear about the first Somali refugee, he doesn’t want to hear about the first African-American from Massachusetts or the first Latina from Texas or the fact there's 89 women swearing in as Democrats to the new Congress. It's driving him crazy so he needs to somehow be able to suck the oxygen out of the room.

KRISTOL: And he doesn’t want to hear about the government shutdown that he was going to take responsibility for.Keilar then brought in White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins to talk about the “non-briefing” “stunt” and so the latter proceeded to give her best Jim Acosta impression. Here’s her comments in full:Well, it certainly wasn't a press briefing which is what the White House called it when they summoned the reporters up here so abruptly. There said there would be a press briefing with the Press Secretary, Sarah Sanders, in the White House press briefing room and that's not what happened when they came out. Now, Sarah Sanders came out. There were a slew of other White House aides here, including the White House communications director, the White House social communications director and then all of these border patrol members behind the President and the President said they had been meeting in the Oval Office talking about the wall. Now, this is President Trump's first time in the press briefing room. He came up to the podium, he made that remark several time that it was his first time in there and, of course, that would lead you to assume that the question would take questions as the President's other predecessors have done in the past. Instead, he spoke about the wall, he invited them to come up and then took no questions from any reporters in the room on the government shutdown stretching into 13 days and then Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, also walked out behind the President and they did not take any questions from reporters. Now, this is something that is essentially unheard of. I'm not sure if the press secretary has ever come into the press briefing room before and not taken a single question from one reporter. Yes, we've had short briefings. Yes, they have been quick before and yes, they’re not very regular in their occurrences but typically they always take questions. That is not what happened here today, and the only thing that it can really remind you of the first time that when Sean Spicer was press secretary and the day after the President's inauguration when they summoned reporters pretty appruptly then. He came out here and shouted about the president's crowd size, saying it was the most attended inauguration ever and then turned away, went back through that door up to his office, and didn’t take any questions. That’s pretty much what just happened with Sarah Sanders and President Trump minus all the shouting that Sean Spicer did on that day. This was not a press briefing, Brianna.Breitbart’s Charlie Spiering claimed that also happened during the Obama administration, so that point is at best debatable.

Keilar refused to let the situation go, telling liberal political commentator Symone Sanders that “it’s just so incongruous what we saw happen in the briefing room” because “[t]hat’s the sort of thing what you might see in the Oval Office where the President might be meeting with some folks and the press is invited in.”

Sanders offered some tired talking points, followed by Kucinich and Navarro fretting that, well, the press was yet again played by the President.

“We've had an entire show where we were going to talk about oversight and we were going to talk about investigations and potential impeachment, and the attorney general of New York and instead for 30 minutes, we're talking about what Donald Trump wants to us talk about which is Donald Trump, his favorite subject in the world,” bemoaned Navarro.

After declining to entertain the idea of border security and claiming that a majority of Americans don’t want a border wall, Keilar concluded by siding with federal workers who aren’t named border patrol agents:Let's not talk about mentioned here, Jackie. He is not mentioning these Americans and these federal workers. 800,000 of them, and how many more people who rely on contract work with the government who are not getting paid, and a lot of these people are paycheck to paycheck. They need that check on January 11th and they are freaking out that they are not going to get it. They didn't mention it.Click to see the relevant transcript from CNN’s The Lead on January 3.
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Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) currently serves as the Managing Editor of NewsBusters after almost two years as a news analyst in the Media Research Center’s News.

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