Which explains his meltdown on Sunday
Chuck Todd is a little confused about what constitutes a 'provable' fact
Yeah, "alternate facts" made me cringe too. But maybe not for the same reason it made you cringe. I understand what Kellyanne Conway was trying to say in her exchange with Chuck Todd, and on substance she absolutely had the better of the argument. That's why it's so frustrating to see what happens when the Trump team gets into these shouting matches with blowhards like Todd. You use one ill-advised term - and yes, "alternate facts" was very ill-advised - and it takes all the focus off the fact that Todd's position was indefensible.
At the heart of it was Todd's angry insistence Sean # had come forth with a series of "provable falsehoods," the clear implication of that being that the media had provable facts to the contrary. They didn't. They still don't. What they have are assertions to the contrary from people they trust more than they trust Trump, Conway or #. Because Chuck Todd's self-regard is so high, that makes these assertions facts. They are not facts.
Here's the segment:
Now let's go through the issues one by one, because everyone gets something a little wrong here.
First, on the question of how big the inauguration crowd was, no one knows.
The New York Times is trying to use "crowd size scientists" to assert a number, but even if there is such a thing as a "crowd size scientist" and they actually know what they're talking about, they're still just offering an estimate.
On the matter of the crowd being restricted for the first time by fencing and magnetometers that went back to the ends of the mall, CNN quotes an anonymous source as saying it's not accurate, but no one is on the record definitely saying one thing or the other. No one has established as a fact what's true.
On the matter of floor mats to protect the grass,, # said it was done for the first time this year. Other sources say it was done for the first time in 2013. Either way it wasn't done in 2009, when the photo to which everyone is comparing Trump's inauguration happened. # might be technically incorrect but the error is insignificant to his larger point.
On the matter of Metro ridership, the numbers reported by the DC Metro appear to indicate that # was wrong.
On the matter of the MLK Jr. bust supposedly being removed from the Oval Office, the media was 100 percent wrong and # was 100 percent right. And he and Trump were 100 percent right to be furious about it. That was the height of journalistic irreponsibility, and it clearly and obviously done out of malice toward the president.
So here's the larger problem: You can argue the facts in most of these matters, but the fact remains that they're arguable. Yet Chuck Todd blusters from his high-and-mighty perch as host of Meet the Press as if his side of the story is "fact" just because he says so and he's Chuck Todd. Yet nothing Todd asserts here is provable at all. Even the question of the time stamp on the now-famous inauguration photos is a matter of inconsistency between different liberal media sources. The Times says they were both taken exactly 45 minutes before the inauguration. Vox says the 2009 photo was taken at 11:30 and the 2017 photo was taken at 11:04. Another source told me this morning that the 2017 photo was taken at 8:43 a.m.
Who is right? Hell if I know. But I'm not sitting here reaming out someone who disagrees with me for uttering "provable falsehoods," because unlike Chuck Todd, I'm honest enough to acknowledge that the facts are in dispute.
Oh, and one other thing: If the media thinks it's silly to fight about crowd size, then it's silly to report on it too, yet they've been running story after story about crowd size since noon on Friday. The way they want it to work is that they can say anything they want to make Trump look bad, no matter how trivial the issue is and no matter how questionable their conclusions are, and if Trump disputes them on it, he's being silly because the very issue is silly.
Here's how I think Trump sees it: If you've decided to pick a fight with Donald Trump, which the media clearly has, you're going to be hit with so much fire you're going to rue the day you picked the fight. And Trump doesn't care what he hits them with, as long as he hits them. There's rational strategy behind this, too, though: If the administration is going to blast the media every time they get facts wrong, then the media needs to be awfully careful not to do that. They may relish these fights with the White House now, but over time the fights are going to erode their credibility to an even lower point than it already is.
They're convinced that Trump vs. media is a war Trump can't win. They've thought that ever since he started his campaign. If you can, name for me a single thing that has ever happened that has backed up that belief. Because I don't think the billionaire who's sitting in the White House is convinced, nor can I think of a reason he should be.
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