Meet the Press: Pathetic Demise of a Once Great News Show, the Longest Running in America

Never have I seen a previously great news analysis show fall so low.

Meet the Press, once under the moderation of aggressive, straight-down-the-middle journalists like original moderator Lawrence E. Spivak, hosts Bill Monroe and Tim Russert, has become a purely Democratic Party-supporting vehicle under Chuck Todd and currently under its most ideologically left-wing moderator, Kristen Welker.

Today, August 25, 2024, Ms. Welker outdid herself.

She interviewed Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance, and after a minute or two of allowing him to answer questions with merely a critical look, nastily interrupted him within every answer and provided a non sequitur for each exchange, and then at the end, when Vance had left, offered her own “correctives.”

It had to be seen to be believed…

Abortion was the topic after tariffs, and emphasizing abortion is a Democratic strategy, the topic from which Republicans suffer the most, despite their efforts to claim that it is but a state issue and out of their hands and that they are completely opposed to a federal ban on its adoption.  “Let the states determine their own policy, Vance said unambiguously was his and Trump’s position, but Welker wouldn’t accept Vance’s claim.

Then Welker focused on Vance’s “childless cat lady” remarks, a point that Vance repeatedly has said was not a serious remark.  It certainly was a dumb gaffe, but over and over Welker insisted and insisted, “Do you regret it; do you regret it?”

Welker asked about Harris’ being put in charge of the “root causes” of [illegal] immigration, not that she was, as Vance asserted,  the “border czar,” apparently because Democrats have retroactively changed history on that matter.  Vance delineated Trump-Vance policy, but Welker would not acknowledge his claims of their being Democratic asylum, mass parole, and the Republicans’ sending of illegal immigrants to ports of entry.

Welker inserts without giving Vance a chance to respond at the end “I don’t hear you denying that families will be separated” under you and Trump.

Then Welker gave a loving interview with Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, virtually uninterrupted and ending as warm-as-warm-can-be.

Warren claimed that Trump has openly “bragged” about banning abortion and falsely claimed that Trump will support Project 2025, which he has disavowed but which disavowal goes unmentioned by Welker.

Warren claimed 30% of women lived in states wherein abortion was banned and that Trump and Vance intended to increase that to 100% — no push back whatsoever from Welker – just silence.

Warren pushed the 2-State solution for Israel and the Palestinians, unsupported by Harris in the Democratic Convention, and a solution that even many Democrats see as a threat to Israel’s existence.

Reaction or response by Welker:  none.

Then the Meet the Press Roundtable with all participants pro-Democratic and one Republican — including Anna Nawaz of PBS’s News Hour, Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, Amy Walter, Editor-in-Chief of the Cook Political Report and Marc Short, the former Chief-of-Staff of former disaffected Vice President Mike Pence (note: Mike Pence is a favorite of this author) who was 99% anti-Trump. And the conversation was nearly all pro-Democratic and anti-Trump with a hyper-emphasis on the Democrats’ issue du jour, abortion — whom does that benefit?

I don’t like Trump, but I could certainly moderate a fair exchange between the two parties…I used to do it all the time as a younger man, moderating political debates.

Richard E. Vatz, Ph.D

 Richard E. Vatz is professor emeritus of political rhetoric at Towson University and author of The Only Authentic of Persuasion: the Agenda-Spin Model  (Authors Press, 2022) and many other works, essays and op-eds.  He is a Distinguished Professor at Towson University and has won a number of teaching awards.