ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl has become known as a bit of a mask scold, going after President Trump and Fox News reporter John Roberts for not wearing them in situations where they were social distancing.
Karl would later apologize to Roberts, saying that he was “a good reporter who cares about protecting his colleagues and his family. He was practicing social distancing. I did not mean to imply otherwise.”
He did not apologize to the President.
Karl spoke to the National Journal about the event and how the media was covering Trump’s indoor campaign rallies.
At the last indoor Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, Karl said, there were some organizations that wouldn’t put their reporters in the building.
However, Las Vegas was “the first time that everybody stayed out except for the pool,” Karl said, referring to the smaller group of reporters within the White House press corps that’ll often report back to their colleagues from events with a reduced media footprint.
This is usually because of space, but Karl is saying that, in this case, it’s because of the dangers posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
“I can’t think of a precedent to this,” Princeton professor Julian Zelizer, an expert on the presidency, told the National Journal.
He said reporters rarely flinch from covering stories that involve physical danger.
‘This is nothing like that,” Zelizer told the National Journal. “‘The president is simply creating a dangerous situation to prove some sort of point. He puts followers at risk, and then reporters who want to cover the story. There is zero sense to what he did.”
Karl has been embedded in war zones and tried to compare the rally to that experience using a parallel that was either clunky, wildly overwrought or both.
“This is not like embedding with the Marines in Fallujah,” he told the National Journal, regarding the contagious nature of the coronavirus. “It is like you are taking your family with you to Fallujah.”
He was making a clumsy attempt to compare the secondary risk of infection families might face from contact with reporters who were paid to attend the rally to families who actually trapped in war zones — where real bullets threaten real death on a daily basis.
Social media users were aghast at Karl’s remarks:
“I know Marines who fought in Fallujah. Covering a political event is no way comparable,” one person tweeted in reaction to Karl’s remarks. “@jonkarl should resign in disgrace or @ABC should fire him unless there is an immediate on air apology that is tweeted far and wide by Mr. Karl’s coward a**.”
Someone else addressed the journalist directly, writing, “@jonkarl Did you really just compare a trump rally to the worst battle our countries seen since hue city? I was in the battle of fallujah. Perhaps you were too far to see all my brother marines losing their lives. Think with your brain & not your agenda dude.”
https://twitter.com/alexplitsas/status/1306320357071245314?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1306320357071245314%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.westernjournal.com%2Fabc-reporter-compares-showing-trump-rally-taking-family-fallujah%2F
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