Press Corps Has Asked Trump 86 Questions This Week — But Zero About His Stunning ‘Glad He’s Dead’ Attack On Mueller

 

Press Corps Has Asked Trump 86 Questions This Week — But Zero About His Stunning 'Glad He's Dead' Attack On Mueller

The White House press corps has asked President Donald Trump 86 questions this week, excluding repetitions — but precisely zero about his stunning attack on former FBI Director, Special Counsel, and decorated war hero Robert Mueller.

Mueller died Friday night at age 81 after a battle with Parkinson’s, which MS NOW first reported on Saturday around midday. It was less than an hour before Trump explicitly attacked Mueller on Truth Social in a post he fired off from his golf club.

Trump wrote:

Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people! President DONALD J. TRUMP

The post was instantly condemned  as “disgusting” and “despicable” by political and media figures, including former White House lawyer Ty Cobb and Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume, among others. Fox News completely ignored the attack, save for a joking reference on their late-night program several days later.

Other Trump allies have been asked about the attack, like Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, who gave a rehearsed and bizarre defense.

“I think that given what has been done to President Trump and his family it is impossible for either of us to understand what he has been through,” Bessent said each time he was asked Sunday on Meet the Press.

But Trump himself, who has been asked questions by White House reporters on three separate occasions since then, has not been asked about the attack. He has also given at least five interviews since then, during which he also wasn’t asked about celebrating the death of Robert Mueller.

In that time, he was asked questions like these:

  • What’s your favorite song, sir,  of Elvis’s?
  • People make pilgrimages here (to Graceland) from all around the world. Would you imagine someday, in the very distant future, people making a similar pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago?
  • President Trump, on a human level, how hopeful are you that this peace deal will work out like as a human?
  • Do you support the construction of the Second Avenue subway in New York City?

There were also a lot of very good, very tough questions asked — mostly about the Iran War, but also about Trump’s deportation crackdown. One reporter pressed Trump when he said he didn’t like masks on ICE agents at airports.

“Why do ICE agents wear masks not at the airport, but they need to do it when they’re out in the country?” the reporter asked.

There were many exchanges in which reporters highlighted contradictions or other flaws in what Trump was saying about the war, from tough reporters like CBS News White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe and, on Monday, CNN Senior White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

So how did this glaring issue slip through the cracks? There were almost certainly some reporters — not of the MAGA loyalist variety — who must have had this question on their lists. Most White House reporters plan out multiple questions on multiple topics, especially since their questions may get asked by another reporter.

There is a firehose of news happening on the Iran war that gushes that much harder when Trump start riffing during a gaggle. When you’re with a disfavored non-MAGA outlet, you have to shop carefully when you get a chance to ask the president a question.

But with that many questions in such a short period of time, there should have been one reporter who could ask such a slam-dunk question. It doesn’t take a tremendous amount of research to find reporters offering previous presidents the opportunity to apologize for much lesser slights.

Is it a combination of numbness — Trump has been increasingly explicit in his death celebrations — and deterrence? Is there a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to getting exiled from question time?

Whatever the case may be, Trump has managed to skate on one of the most outrageous attacks ever by a president on a deceased public servant.

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