Journalism is ideally supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Sometimes that requires getting in there and demanding actual answers.
It would be so much easier if being nice and polite and trying to shame Trump into actually being accountable for his words was a strategy that worked. Unfortunately, politeness doesn’t tend to work on trolls and bullies. From all we’ve seen the only way to actually get an answer out of him is to apply pressure. And then follow up on how his last answer is completely incompatible with other things he’s said.
We the people aren’t there to ask Trump the hard questions. That’s the press’ job. And if they are only going to be polite and nice and not push back and not demand answers, then that’s not being journalists. That’s being stenographers.
