A tirade by a reporter against White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders on Tuesday was interpreted by MSNBC host Chris Matthews as pushing back against being “props” in a “PR campaign.”
Matthews made the comment while interviewing Brian Karem, the executive editor of the Montgomery County Sentinel, who made headlines earlier in the day when he clashed with Sanders for “inflammatory” behavior by lumping together news outlets when attacking the “fake media.”
“Let me try to interpret what you’re doing another way,” Matthews began. “The reporters who sit in those chairs there in the briefing room at the White House, have to sit there. They have to sit there because they’ve been assigned to that post, to that spot. And if somebody up there is doing a PR campaign against them, they have to sit there and be props, basically props for the White House press secretary, to use them and yell at them and treat they will like high school kids or grade school kids that were disobedient and didn’t get their homework in on time.”
Matthews added that the media in the briefing room are being “used as a PR campaign.”
“So the people for the more right-wing reaches of the country who still believe in [President] Trump, they’re watching them being paddled, basically. Given a time-out,” he concluded.
“I don’t like being paddled. I don’t like being spanked,” Karem responded, adding that the attitude he gets from the White House press team is similar to what he experiences from his children.
Matthews’ remarks come after a week of White House press briefings not being on camera, which irked many journalists, including the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Earlier in the interview, Karem explained that while he has a “healthy respect” for both Sanders and White House press secretary Sean Spicer, he got “rankled” when the “dishonest” media talk began.
