Tom Ashbrook treated him fairly but Steve slams NPR’s Susan Stamberg and Noah Adams in fine style. Consider also NPR host Terry Gross, who conducts fascinating interviews with writers, musicians and artists. With guests on the political side, on the other hand, the critical skills and background knowledge seem to disappear.
In February of 2019, Gross interviewed former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, author of The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. It wasn’t clear whether Gross had read the book, and she let the author rattle on at length.
“The president was clearly dissatisfied with or angry about the existence of the Russia Investigation,” huffed McCabe. Trump “fires the director of the FBI” and talks about it. “All of those circumstances put us in a position where we couldn’t any longer deny the fact that we were in possession of articulable facts that might indicate a national security threat could exist,” and so on. As Eric Idle said, “I don’t like people who vent their loquacity with extraneous bombastic circumlocution.”
Terry Gross brought up nothing about Christopher Steele and the DNC-Clinton-funded dossier, and showed no curiosity about DOJ boss Bruce Ohr and his Sovietophile wife Nellie, who was working for Fusion GPS at the time. Gross failed to probe the actions of Peter Strzok, Lisa Page et al, and their “Mid-Year Exam” and “Crossfire Hurricane” operations. Nothing about the FBI exoneration of candidate Hillary Clinton and the “insurance policy” to be deployed in the event that Trump won, which he did.
McCabe’s book claims the FBI “protects America in the age of terror.” Listeners may have recalled Islamic terrorists attacks on 9/11, at Fort Hood (2009), the Boston Marathon (2013), San Bernardino (2015) and Orlando (2016). Terry Gross could have asked McCabe why the FBI failed to prevent those deadly attacks and played no role in takedown of the terrorists.
No surprise that the NPR host wasn’t down for it. As Steve explained, this network has “misappropriated public funds for partisan purposes, which has to be a violation of several statutes.”
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.