Sparks were flying Wednesday on CNN Tonight, as The Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Wolff shot down the liberal media’s obsession with President-Elect Donald Trump’s press-less dinner at the 21 Club. “All the press has talked about this for the last 24 hours,” he exclaimed to a fuming Brian Stelter, “We have to stop talking about ourselves. It's not about us.”
Wolff went on to warn Stelter and the rest of the CNN panel that that mentality is how the election result snuck up on them. “And unless we learn that, we're going to continue to go down the road-- find ourselves in the position that we found ourselves last Tuesday,” he argued.
Proving themselves to be completely oblivious to figures of speech, both Stelter and host Don Lemon both defending themselves by claiming that they have talked about other news items in the last 24 hours. “But nevertheless, they have talked about enormous amount about something that only effects them,” Wolff shot back.
The host of “Reliable Sources” took umbrage with Wolff’s position that the press was in the wrong, and argued that Trump was really to blame. “He made a mistake last night. His administration made a mistake. They should have brought the press with them. It was a mistake,” Stelter rambled even though Trump has no administration yet. Wolff told Stelter, “I don’t think they should have brought the press with them at all,” and then said anything else was “ridiculous.”
Stelter seemed to snap as he started to yell over Wolff and Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes “They have made a series of mistakes for the past eight days! They can correct his mistakes at any time! The press pool is in the lobby of Trump Tower!”
It was a fairly angry response from someone who said “I’m not angry” when talking about why the media is fixated on Trump’s dinner. “He's not president yet and I find it really interesting you want the American people to be angry at a man who has not been sworn into office yet for just wanting to go have dinner with his family,” Hughes stated.
Lemon agreed with Stelter, claiming, “I don’t think anyone insinuated that.” But the way Stelter exploded, and the media have been framing the story proves just the opposite. When ABC reports the dinner as “bucking the tradition of transparency;” and Bloomberg calls it “a major brake in protocol;” and the White Correspondents Association describes it as “unacceptable,” what other emotion could the press possibly be trying to impart to the public other than anger?