Watch a Painfully Choreographed Interview Between Paul Ryan and Dana Perino

From the House, to the Senate, to the President, Republicans are doing everything they can to sell their tax plan to a clearly skeptical electorate.

For House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), that meant a pop in on Fox News Wednesday to speak with Dana Perino on The Daily Briefing. And it became clear at the beginning of the six-minute conversation that this was not going to be a probing interview.

The questions were amiable from the outset. But at approximately the 3:25 mark of the video above, the segment veered toward full-on choreography — and bad choreography, at that. Perino set up Ryan to boast about the number of bills passed by the House during President Donald Trump‘s first year.

“As you end the year of 2017, there has been a lot of criticism from people like Steve Bannon, or other populists who say that the establishment, so-called establishment, is not carrying out president Trump’s agenda. Not doing enough,” Perino said to Ryan. “But I think that you would probably disagree with that — if you look at how many bills you have actually passed out of the house.”

Ryan actually asked for a graphic to be put up — without specifying what that graphic would be. He referred to it only as “the chart.”

“Can you put the chart up?” Ryan said. “Because I can’t see what you are doing on TV.”

And well, hey, wudduya know? The control room just happened to have “the chart” — a bar graph comparing the number of House-passed bills in the first year of the past five administrations — all set up and ready to go.

“I have a chart,” Perino said. “Yes, let’s see. Do we have it here? This is the one — I think — it says to me you have passed 462 bills to date.”

Ryan was then allowed to crow about the statistic — which showed that the House has passed more bills during Trump’s first year than it did during the first year of any of Trump’s four most recent predecessors — without any pushback whatsoever.

This was highly disappointing coming from Perino, the former Press Secretary to President George W. Bush. We have appreciated her work in the past, particularly on The Five — where she has often served as a much needed voice of reason. But this interview was a farce. It felt more like a sales pitch one would see on the Home Shopping Network.

We expect this kind of thing from Fox & Friends. From Perino, we expect better.

Watch above, via Fox News.

[featured image via screengrab]

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