Brooks: We Need More Trump Supporters in Media, But McDaniel Didn’t Have ‘Primary Commitment to the Truth’

On Friday’s broadcast of “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks said that “there are a lot of people out there who would fit both bills, who are good journalists and support Donald Trump.” And there need to be more Trump supporters on TV news, but former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel was “clearly over the line” because “to be on our air or in our newspapers, you’ve got to have some intellectual credibility. You have to have some primary commitment to the truth and the truth above partisanship.”

Brooks said, “I was glad they had the instinct to get more Trump-supporting people on the air. I think that’s something we all need to work on. But here was someone clearly over the line. Like, to be on our air or in our newspapers, you’ve got to have some intellectual credibility. You have to have some primary commitment to the truth and the truth above partisanship. And she was just someone who clearly fails that test. … But I do think there’s a difference between being a politico, which is — I admire them. And what we do, they — we talk of — we’re supposed to be — represent the truth first and foremost and criticize the parties. And their job is…to be partisan. Now, there are people who have gone from being a politico to being a journalist. George Stephanopoulos comes to mind, and lots of people. But you got to have — you’ve got to realize it’s a different job with a different set of priorities, a different set of ethics. And to get somebody right off the RNC on the air as an analyst, strikes me as just a gigantic mistake.”

He added, “[W]hen I started as a police reporter in Chicago, there were tons of working-class guys there, and I guess, in my case, they tended to be guys, but they had no college degree. It became, over the course of the decades, that if you wanted to work in journalism, you had to have a college degree. And suddenly, we’re just slicing off the majority of the country, basically. And so, those people felt their voice wasn’t heard. … I do think there are a lot of people out there who would fit both bills, who are good journalists and support Donald Trump. There’s a fine magazine called Compact magazine that’s more populist. There’s a place called the Claremont Institute in California, that’s more populist. I think they’re out there. We just have to work harder, I think. I still think we have to work harder to find those people and put — give them — so their voices are heard.”