Media Hypocrisy on Full Display as WH Press Secretary Escapes Scrutiny for Slur That Would Kill a Republican's Career
The difference couldn’t be any starker — and the mainstream media couldn’t be more exposed.
For four years, the American people watched as showboating reporters attacked every utterance from the White House press secretary’s podium during the Donald Trump presidency, trying to build their own careers at the expense of spokeswomen like Kayleigh McEnany and Sarah Sanders.
But when a viciously mean-spirited tweet from current White House press secretary Jen Psaki surfaced this week, the tribunes of the people went suddenly silent.
Sure, Psaki might have used a slur that would have been considered “homophobic” if it had come from a Republican, and sure the White House press corps would be screaming if it had been one of Psaki’s predecessors.
But she’s on the Democrats’ team; the man she was attacking is South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of former President Donald Trump’s most outspoken defenders in the D.C. establishment. And the media hypocrisy was on full display.
In an August tweet, Psaki employed an insulting nickname to refer to Graham over his questioning of former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates at a hearing about the origins of the “Russia collusion” hoax.
“Only in 2020 does #LadyG get to push a bunch of debunked conspiracy theories while questioning @SallyQYates (aka an American hero),” Psaki wrote.
The tweet was still up as of late Thursday morning.
For most conservatives, Psaki calling Yates as an “American hero” would be bad enough.
Yates is the former acting attorney general who endeared herself to liberals by getting fired by then-President Trump in January of 2017 over her theatrical refusal to enforce Trump’s ban on travelers from countries linked to international terrorism.
But Psaki also took the occasion to use the hashtag “#LadyG,” which is apparently snide liberal shorthand for rumors that the South Carolina conservative is secretly gay. (It comes from a June 2020 “Perspective” piece published by The Washington Post.)
For the record, Graham has denied it. “To the extent it matters, I’m not gay,” he told a TMZ interviewer in 2018.
Graham has been in politics — and the public eye — for a long time. As his biography page notes, he entered the House of Representatives with the midterms of 1994 — the year of the Newt Gingrich “Contract with America” and the Republican revolution — before being elected to the Senate in 2002.
He’s not new to the slings and arrows of political combat, and a sophomoric jab in August from a then-CNN commentator isn’t something that would likely get his attention.
But that CNN commentator is now the spokeswoman for a United States president who’s made “gender equality” issues one of his hallmarks — even on policies, as Sen. Rand Paul pointed out on Wednesday, that are simply “bizarre.”
In a consistent world, the fact that the press secretary for such a president was found using a bullying, anti-gay slur like calling a sitting senator “#LadyG” might arouse something like curiosity among the White House press corps.
At a time when the national media just spent four years attacking even a hint of “homophobia,” “racism” or “xenophobia” that raised its head in a politically correct world, an insult directed at a politician’s alleged sexuality should have roused the righteous indignation of the political left.
Naturally, though, the only ones who noticed were on the right, like Richard Grenell, the openly gay former U.S. ambassador to Germany for the Trump administration who also served as acting director of national intelligence.
Homophobia and intolerance from the Left is growing.
This should be widely condemned. @PressSec https://t.co/94GW0Xzaoq
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) February 3, 2021
“Homophobia and intolerance from the Left is growing,” Grenell wrote. “This should be widely condemned.”
The Rush Limbaugh radio show producer known as Bo Snerdley also weighed in, with a reference to former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the married gay man and former Democratic presidential contender who was confirmed Tuesday as transportation secretary.
“Wonder what the reaction would have been if a Trump spokeswoman had called Mayor Pete ‘Lady P’?” Snerdley wrote. “Would that person still be employed 48 hours later?”
Wonder what the reaction would have been if a Trump spokeswoman had called Mayor Pete “Lady P.” ?
Would that person still be employed 48 hours later? https://t.co/9IU7RtO1eX— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) February 3, 2021
The Western Journal’s Andrew Sciascia summed it up in a nutshell.
Just kidding. Only conservatives get canceled.
— Andrew J. Sciascia (@AndrewJSciascia) February 3, 2021
Psaki isn’t going to be “condemned” as Grenell wrote. She’s not going to be out of a job. She’s not going to be canceled, protested, hounded by the reporters she deals with every day or skewered by the “comics” who take to the airwaves every night.
She’s on Team Biden. That means she can be vicious, insulting and demeaning in ways the national mainstream media would never accept from a Trump White House spokeswoman.
The difference in how the two presidencies are treated couldn’t be starker, the mainstream media couldn’t be more obvious, and the American people know it.
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