On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Thursday, National Review columnist Mark Steyn argued that the media — despite recently taking umbrage at President Barack Obama’s lack of transparency on the golf course — are lapdogs not unlike the journalists coerced by the Soviet Union.

“There are lots of things to get upset with the guy over,” Steyn said. “The issue here is the gulf between what the president preaches and how he lives. … One Christmas vacation costs more than flying the royal family around the world for a whole year. … He doesn’t live like [the] 1 percent, he lives like the 0.00000001 percent. He costs more money than every European royal family put together. There’s a disconnect here.”

Steyn said the media are exacerbating that disconnect.

“Essentially, Obama has achieved the same relationship with the press and the media and public information that the Soviet Communist Party had to jam radio transmissions and smash printing presses to achieve. Essentially these guys are volunteering to do for him what they had to be coerced into doing most self-respecting countries, and I think that’s the real issue here.”

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