I know it’s getting a little tired to point out media bias, but in the case of Chuck Todd, well, he holds a special place in the pantheon of biased and corrupt broadcasters.  His taking over of Meet the Press was a disappointment.  To be sure, David Gregory was not much better, and Tim Russert was far superior to both.  Since Russert’s death, the show has lost all gravitas and now would be at home on MSNBC just as well as NBC.

Chuck Todd’s interview style is prosecutorial in tone against Republicans, whereas with Democrats his tone is collegial, and one would not be surprised, considering the Wikileaks revelations, if the Democrats are given the interview questions ahead of time.

One always wonders when watching one of these shows why the Republican guest doesn’t just point out the blatant bias of the interviewer.  Instead, in a Mitt Romneyesque manner, the guest patiently follows along with the premises and the frames that the interviewer sets.  To take Mitt Romney’s example, he was always competent in these settings and could give a smooth response, but he never let the audience know that what was occurring was not quite right.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, in an interview with Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Chuck Todd did the usual routine of producing an “infamous quote” from Trump, in fact reading a whole litany of them, such as insulting the precious Khizr Khan.  Manafort responded, “Well, Chuck, you’re now repeating the talking points of the Clinton campaign.”  So Manafort, like his boss, has a way of cutting to the chase and taking the fight to the enemy in a way that I’m sure non-liberal voters find very satisfying.

For those who don’t already know, there exists an email from former DNC president Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Chuck Todd, referencing her displeasure with Mika Brzezinski’s negative commentary on Schultz, and Mika’s calls for Schultz to resign.  In retrospect, Brzezinski was more than a little bit right.  The email from Wikileaks has Schultz imperiously demanding that this negative coverage end: “Chuck, this must stop.”  As Roosh Valizadeh puts it, Todd responded to that email telling Schultz to contact him, “giving a wide window of availability as if he was the cable guy.”

If your boss was doing something you didn’t like, you wouldn’t say, “This must stop.”  But if your employee was doing something you didn’t like, that imperative would be perfectly appropriate; and we can therefore conclude that this describes how the relationship had been between Schultz and Todd.  Is he therefore not a little out of line in pursuing the “Russian connection” Clinton narrative regarding Wikileaks in his interview with Manafort, seeing as that Chuck himself is implicated in Wikileaks?

Chuck, this must stop.

Contact Malcolm Unwell.