Press the Meat

     Liken it to the maiden voyage of the Titanic.

     Of all the launches that Kristen Welker could've possibly made as she assumed for the first time one of the most plum spots in the news game: the Big Chair of the long-running Meet the Press, lord only knows what she and NBC were thinking in settling on Donald Trump as a vehicle for that debut.

     Apparently, NBC didn't learn the object lesson that one would think was taught by CNN after that Hindenburg of a "town hall" that wound up getting CNN's CEO Chris Licht fired.

     It was kind of like hiring to cut a ribbon a person already found guilty of murdering countless people by stabbing them with scissors. Seriously, Donald Trump is a man who is so demented, so untethered to reality that he is no longer capable of telling the truth, knowing what the truth is or even caring what the truth is. The interview came right in the middle of a particularly demented weekend in which mental health professionals and media pundits have long since jettisoned the so-called "Goldwater rule" and have begun openly speculating if Trump is completely insane.

     Even before the NBC interview aired, Trump gave a speech in which he warned us that Joe Biden was going to thrust us into WWII (President Biden was born in 1942 during WWII) and that he beat Barack Obama in 2016. But that was just a warmup for the Meet the Press interview.

     Trump's notorious allergy to the truth should have already been an article of faith. And what does it say that Fox, since 1996 a fire hose of sewage and falsehoods, rarely has Trump on any more yet Trump is still given safe harbor at networks like CNN and NBC?

     Oh, and he threatened and shamed Jews for not voting for him and on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to boot.

     Maybe that's why Hitler went after the Jews of Europe, because they didn't vote for him in sufficient numbers in 1933.

     But the Meet the Press interview went the way they should've expected it- With Trump spewing a water cannon of lies that would've been impossible to fact-check even if Welker was willing to do so which, of course, she wasn't. Instead, Trump interrupted her and talked on top of her in his usual boorish, bull in a china shop way. Instead, NBC invited their viewers to go to their fact check page, which isn't nearly as efficacious as fact-checking that psychopath in real time

     Among the lies that remained unchallenged: Democrats abort babies after birth. 15,000,000 illegal immigrants are expected to cross the border this year. Afghanistan was all Biden's fault. And, oh yeah, Biden's cognitively challenged.

     It was the Frog and Scorpion parable all over again, with the frog in this case being NBC. "Why are you lying to us, Mr. President?" (Yes, Welker called him "Mr. President") "Because it's my nature."

     Look, Trump's got the right to say whatever he wants under the First Amendment. No one's disputing that. But he has Truth Social to spew his lies. Or, if he doesn't care about Truth Social's share price, he can always go back to Twitter. But TV networks always have to weigh the dubious benefit of the ratings they'd get by having Trump vs their credibility.

     And at this point, there is zero newsworthiness in giving Trump a free platform for his lies. All it does is give him a megaphone he neither needs nor deserves and gives the MSM the unwholesome appearance of being ready, willing and able to normalize his sociopathy and ass-wiping disregard for the truth.