This week’s Mainstream Media Scream features NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, hosting Sunday’s Meet the Press, and insisting that she has “no political axe to grind” during contentious questioning of White House budget director Mick Mulvaney over the tax reform package and Alabama Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore.

Mulvaney challenged her bias, and she said “we’re not taking a political point of view here” and “I have no political axe to grind.”



Excerpt 1

Mick Mulvaney: “So I laugh every time I come on networks like this, they accuse us of cutting taxes on the rich. Every time I go on different networks, and you may understand who those are, they accuse us of raising taxes on the rich. So I think it looks — depends on how you want to look at it.”

Andrea Mitchell: “We’re not taking a political point of view here. We are actually going by nonpartisan groups like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, all the impact on the exploding deficit which will impact future generations.”

Excerpt 2

Mitchell: “Do you believe that the women who’ve come out against Roy Moore are credible?”

Mulvaney: “I believe they’re credible. I don’t know who to believe. Again, I'm at the Office of Management and Budget–”

Mitchell: “You don’t believe them?”

Mulvaney: “No, I said they’re credible. I don’t know who to believe. And I do think, as the president said, that voters should decide.”

Mitchell: “If they’re credible. Why wouldn’t you believe them?”

Mulvaney: “Andrea, I run the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C. You work for NBC News in Washington, D.C. My guess is we’ve not spent that much time looking at the specifics of these allegations. You’ve arrived at a certain conclusion because of a certain political persuasion. We’re simply–”

Mitchell: “Not because of a political persuasion at all. I’m -- I am simply asking whether you believe that they are credible. They have been out in public. They have spoken on the record. Some were brought, some stories were brought out by Alabama journalists in the local newspapers down there, not just by the Washington Post. And I have no political axe to grind here other than to ask you whether you believe they are credible.”

Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our weekly pick: “No one is buying Mitchell’s denials. She’s just upset that a guest called her out on her obvious political agenda, with her questioning exactly matching Democratic talking points. Score one for the Trump team in highlighting an all too typical media misdeed.”

Rating: Four out of five screams.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com