The interview with Steve Scalise at ABC was a case study on how not to deal with liars

In the months since last November’s presidential election, several prominent Republicans have not only lied about Joe Biden’s victory being tainted by fraud, but have repeatedly been given a platform to do so on national TV. This weekin Sunday interview with congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA) stood out as an example of why people think news networks should know better now.

ABC’s main Sunday news talk show caught fire on Friday when the show’s Twitter account announced that Sunday’s edition would feature an interview with Scalise, a loyal to Trump who spread lies about the 2020 election and on 6 of January voted against Joe Biden’s election victory certification.

And in the end, Scalise’s interview illustrated exactly why people thought hiring him was a bad idea.

The interview ended with presenter Jon Karl (George Stephanopoulos’ replacement) asking a question he probably should have asked, given how it reflects how much Scalise is living in a make-believe world. Karl asked him to claim that “Joe Biden won the election, he is the legitimate president of the United States, the election was not stolen, correct?”

Scalise’s response indicated that he is in fact living in a world of unreality.

“Look, Joe Biden is the president,” said Scalise, avoiding the question. “There were some states that did not follow their state laws. This is really the dispute that you have seen continue. “

Karl should have cut Scalise here, as his claim that states do not follow “their own state laws” has been repeatedly rejected by federal courts. But instead of stepping back, Karl allowed Scalise to try to discredit Biden’s victory.

“The Constitution says that state legislatures establish the rules for elections. This has not happened in some states, ”continued Scalise, offering an interpretation of the Constitution inconsistent with the recent Supreme Court precedent, which was maintained on Monday. “It didn’t happen in some states.”

At that point, Karl interrupted. But instead of getting involved with the merits (or lack thereof) of Scalise’s position, he only pressured him to answer the original question.

“IT IS [Biden] the legitimate president of the United States and you admit that this election was not stolen? ”Said Karl.

Scalise finally admitted that “once voters are counted, yes, he is the legitimate president”. But he never admitted that the election was not stolen from Trump. Karl then ended the interview by saying, “Okay, Congressman Steve Scalise, thanks for joining us on This week. “

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Karl’s gentle treatment of Scalise – who at the beginning of the interview went so far as to refuse to recognize that Trump has responsibility for the uprising he encouraged – is in contrast to how Stephanopoulos handled Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) in This week on January 24, when Paul made similar false statements about the election.

“There were 86 challenges made by President Trump and his allies in court – all were dismissed,” admonished Stephanopoulos. “Each state certified the results after investigations, counts and recounts. The Justice Department led by William Barr said there was no widespread evidence of fraud. Can you just say the words, ‘this election was not stolen’? “

Tactics aside, the broader question of whether TV news should continue to hire Republicans who spread lies about the election is complex. But ABC’s handling of Scalise represented the worst-case scenario of all worlds, where they are not only invited to the air, but can lie with impunity.

Do not hire liars unless you are prepared to call them

On the one hand, Scalise is the Republican whip of the House and, as an elected official with a leading role in Congress, what he says is intrinsically interesting. The same can be said of other Republicans loyal to Trump who recently appeared on Sunday’s shows, like Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ron Johnson, Mike Rounds, Paul and others.

Donald Trump has led the Republican Party down a path where his relationship with the truth is more strained than ever, but the fact is that the party is only a handful of seats away from turning its narrow minorities in the House and Senate into majorities. Seen in this light, the editorial decision to interview people like Scalise is defensible as a way to register powerful people in their opinions.

On the other hand, however, the purpose of the news media at some level is to convey accurate information. Since Republicans now have a habit of misinforming people about what happened in the 2020 elections and other issues, it can be argued that it is irresponsible to give them a platform not only to confuse public conversation, but to spread their own lies about the election that inspired the deadly January 6 uprising.

Of course, the ideas that what the elected Republican officials say is important, but that they shouldn’t have the opportunity to appear on TV and lie with impunity, are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to use interviews as forums to hold them accountable for making unfounded opinions known.

An excellent example of this was a January 21 interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett with Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), who voted with Scalise against accepting the election results in the House after the January 6 uprising.

While Malliotakis tried to spread conspiracy theories about last November’s election that were at odds with the facts, Burnett interrupted it and said, “Do you think you believed a narrative here that we all know to be completely false? I mean, [Trump] is out there saying that 5,000 dead have voted in Georgia. Two dead people voted in Georgia. But it was a rhetoric like that that put people like you on board. Do you think you were cheated? “

Malliotakis quickly backed down to circular arguments about how Trump supporters’ suspected fraud is evidence that it did – but Burnett also drew attention to that.

“These tens of millions of Americans think it was not fair because Donald Trump told them that, and that Donald Trump voice was amplified by other people in power,” she said, alluding to Malliotakis’ complicity.

Conducting difficult interviews like this makes it less likely that people like Scalise or Malliotakis will accept an invitation to come to your program next time. But at a time when Republicans are using lies about electoral fraud not only to delegitimize President Biden, but also to push for changes in state laws that will make it difficult for people to vote, there are more important things than achieving nominal party balance.