Don Surber on masterfully handling the obnoxious press (plus a bonus tweet)

Without a doubt, Don Surber has been on the Trump train since at least 2016—maybe long before that. He's written books like Trump the Press, describing Donald Trump's sometimes masterful handling of the hostile media apparatus. In this Substack article, Surber reviews the actions and rhetoric of Vivek Ramaswamy and Canada's conservative Pierre Poilievre. Both men have faced hostile members of the press. Surber concludes that Poilievre does a somewhat better job of handling journalists than Ramaswamy does, but Surber gives Vivek a lot of credit, too, especially in how Vivek uses video of his exchanges with the press to further his points. Surber's article also rather randomly includes a link to a bit of humorous nonsense that made me laugh—a tweet showing birds and the humans who act like them (see below to see what I mean). First, though, here are some excerpts from Surber's Substack article:

The Bezos Post sent Meryl Kornfield to the cornfields of Iowa to get a quote from Vivek Ramaswamy so she could write that he’s a white supremacist. She made the mistake of asking him the question in public, at a Ramaswamy rally, because that gave him the opportunity to humiliate her in public.

And he did.

Kornfield cited some article in the New York Times. You could hear the eyes roll.

[ ... ]

Kornfield is a handmaiden to Bezos, wasting her youth smearing people to amuse the second-richest man in the world.

Ramaswamy handled her better than Nikki Haley handled that weird question about why we had a civil war. Trump later said, “I don’t know that it’s going to have an impact, but, you know, I’d say slavery is sort of the obvious answer as opposed to about three paragraphs of bullshit."

Ramaswamy’s handling of Kornfield was good but not Pierre Poilievre Good.

[ ... ]

Pierre Poilievre leads the loyal opposition to Justin Castreau in Canada. His seems like a task the gods used to punish Prometheus for giving fire to mortals because in my lifetime Canadians have gone from being stout-hearted men to being soft-headed socialists. They have a state-run health system that they are willing to die for.

But Poilievre marches on. He gave an interview in a field to Don Urquhart, editor of the Times Chronicle, eating an apple as the editor went through his questions. A video of the interview went viral, as they say, as Poilievre gave a lesson on how to handle the press.

It was the most famous eating of an apple since Eve.

[ ... ]

Republicans can learn from Poilievre. He was not confrontational but conversational. He made Urquhart explain the questions, which defused them. In fact, in the exchange the CBC used, Poilievre asked all the questions: “What does that mean?” “Like what?” “A lot of people? Like which people would say that?”

He was relaxed. Instead of getting all angry and making the story about his hostility, Poilievre made the story about the questions the reporter asked.

And Poilievre also got it on tape so he could back up his version of the story had the reporter played fast and loose with the facts.

Ramaswamy used a tape on Kornfield and it worked. He was not through. He went on NBC and pushed back.

Read the rest. Here's the comical tweet Surber linked to:

this is so dumb I love it 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/yoyfOeNM8P

— Rock (@TheCensoredRock) January 5, 2024