beDplorable
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The MSNBC anchor who knew too little
MSNBC's Katy Tur, who anchors a weekday politics show, does not seem to know much about politics.
www.washingtonexaminer.com
The MSNBC anchor who knew too little
by Becket Adams
| February 08, 2020 06:00 AM
MSNBC's Katy Tur, who anchors a weekday politics show, does not seem to know much about politics.
This is what happens when you promote someone based on popularity rather than merit.
On Friday, Tur, who became media-famous in 2016 after then-GOP candidate Donald Trump was mean to her, asked a guest whether gerrymandering could be used to break up Republican control of the U.S. Senate.
"Is gerrymandering something that would help improve the situation? How does that sort of divide promote consensus in the Senate, or even in the House?" she asked.
Senate races are not influenced by gerrymandered districts as there is no such thing as a Senate district. The races are statewide. That a political journalist would not know this is absurd. That the anchor of a politics news show would not know this is something far beyond absurd. I am not sure if there is even a word for it.
There is much more where this comes from, courtesy of Tur’s seemingly bottomless well of ignorance.
In February 2019, she claimed George Washington was a “native son of New York.” Washington was a Virginian.
Earlier, Tur asserted "53,000 votes” in Georgia were “on hold right now" ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. No votes were “on hold.” She was likely referring to the 53,000 voter registrations that were at the time deemed "pending" by Georgia election officials. However, as the Washington Free Beacon notes, “Eligible voters with pending status can still cast regular votes if they bring identification to the polls.”
Tur claimed falsely during the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh that no Republican senator extended a kind or thoughtful word to Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford when she testified before Congress. Many GOP senators had kind words for Ford.
Earlier than that, Tur reported that former Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. McCaskill did no such thing.
In July 2018, Tur claimed the “the Republican Party decided not to arm Ukraine,” forgetting or ignoring the fact that the Trump administration had signed off on a massive sale of defensive weapons to arm Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists.
Tur identified former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry as the head of the Interior (not true) immediately after stating he wanted to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency (also not true). She suggested falsely that there are no limits “at all” to the Second Amendment. She claimed incorrectly that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies determined that “Russia meddled in our election.” Tur said the Steele dossier, which was used to justify the FBI’s surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign, was paid for by the Washington Free Beacon. Not true. Steele's contributions to the Trump dossier came after the Washington Free Beacon had already abandoned the project and Democratic operatives took it over. Tur insinuated that Trump would move to have reporters in the United States assassinated. She mistook fireworks in Jerusalem for shelling. She does not know the difference between Montana and North Dakota. Tur reported in 2018 that then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott dodged a meeting with pro-gun-control activists when, in fact, he was attending a funeral for the victim of a shooting.
Most embarrassing of all, Tur revealed early in her career as the anchor of a politics news show that she had never heard of President Barack Obama’s hot mic moment with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, wherein the American chief executive was caught promising to give Russia’s Vladimir Putin a little more “flexibility” after the 2012 election.
Never let it be said that only men fail up in the news business.
