One of the reasons why this blog is going to end as a business at the end of this year has been the various reverses and collapses that took place after things started to get big around here, plus I’m now kinda old to be chasing around the country in the hope that someone will fund it and maybe slip a few extra buck to keep the lights on at home.
But I had my share of big moments, reporting from the middle of an Antifa riots in Denver, My 2010 road trip with Stacy McCain. Multiple CPACS including my final one with my sons when I first reported on Trump making gains with the black community, Scott Brown’s victory party of course, credentialed press at the Romney “victory” party but likely the biggest one in terms of relevance was covering Donald Trump’s first NH rally and it’s the one that makes the point concerning letting alternative media into the press room at the White House.
Let me tell you my story.
When I got to that event in Derry I noticed right away that these weren’t the normal activists turning up or being bussed in that I had seen over and over when covering events in NH. These were regular people. I did a bunch of interviews talking to anyone willing to talk to me to find out why they came and was quickly convinced those regular people showing up WAS the story (Stacy McCain will tell you about my call to him on that matter). As you may or may not know I carried three cameras with me at the time because I didn’t have a ton of extra batteries. I was on my 2nd camera when Trump had his press conference where I was standing in the back. Here is my recording of same.
You might notice two things when watching.
- I repeatedly attempted to get my question in and failed
- The media questions were all basicially
- Why does the GOP suck?
- Why do you, your campaign & your ideas suck?
- What are you going to do about the fact that you, your campaign, your ideas and the GOP suck?
My recording stopped 18 min in because at that point camera 2’s battery gave out and I have to resort to camera #3 which due to a problem did not allow me to zoom in so I had a wide shot when finally I got to ask Donald Trump my question:
Two things you might notice about my question:
- Notice the surprise from Trump getting an actual relevant question.
- Notice the media looking back to find out: “Hey, whose not with the program?”
It wasn’t a question of trying to give Trump an easy question. I had decided that those regular folks WERE the story and the question I asked was consistent with what I thought the most important thing was.
Any one of those media people there could have done those interview or asked that question but nobody bothered because they weren’t there to cover a story in the hopes of making a buck, they were there to advance an agenda because that’s how they made their bucks. And that simple act of asking that question in Derry is why he recognized me and called on me in Worcester months later again on what I considered the real story, the lack of protestors when people had been calling for them in the 2nd biggest city in New England which has 10 Colleges in it.
Although in fairness wearing a 12 ft long Dr. Who scarf and a fedora likely helped a bit for him remember me.
I suspect that if you open things up to bloggers like myself or influencers or the alternative media you will get a better set of questions and actually inform the public.
And why would you want to reward a press corps that hates you anyways?
So Donald Trump JR. I strongly suggest you go ahead and let guys like me in, even though by the time you do so I won’t be doing it anymore.
Closing thought: However I would love to get a 20 min on camera interview with the president election before the end of the year and post that as the final act of DaBlog as a business. Might as well go out in style.
If you’re willing let me know.
Update: I mentioned my call to Stacy McCain in this post completely unaware that he mentioned the same in a post today:
After going all-in on the 2012 campaign (“Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption”), I’d decided to avoid the 2016 campaign and was more or less neutral about the GOP primary. But then in September 2015, I got a call from Pete Da Tech Guy, who was covering a Trump rally in New Hampshire. “Stacy, this Trump thing is for real,” Pete told me. “You wouldn’t believe the size of this crowd.”
There was a real grassroots surge of support for Trump, and so the attitude of the Professional Conservative Pundit crowd turned from ridicule to hatred. Whereas they had originally treated Trump as a joke, now he was seen as threat.
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