'The Office' star pushes back on MSNBC host blaming Trump, Musk for distrust in media
"The Office" star Rainn Wilson pushed back on MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle for suggesting that President Donald Trump's win and Elon Musk's "media machine" were to blame for overall distrust in the press.
"President Trump won and tons of people were shocked or angry or frustrated and they're tuning out, and at the same time, you have the Elon Musk media machine, because they want you to leave traditional media, they want you to go to X, which is a bastion of misinformation," Ruhle said during an appearance on Wilson's "Soul Boom" podcast released on April 17.
"What we need to do is just cover what's happening in America, right? We have to cover Democrats trying to figure out what their lane is and how they're going to get back on their feet, and we have to simply cover what this White House is doing."
However, Wilson suggested there was a lack of interest among left-leaning media to aggressively cover problems during the Biden administration.
"This is where I would push back, when I see this kind of insight and passion being directed at the current administration and the lack of this kind of insight and passion being directed at the previous administration, where again, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about left-leaning news media organizations were kind of like, 'La la la la, everything's fine,'" Wilson told Ruhle in a clip flagged by The Daily Caller.
"'Look, the economy is great, la la la, immigration’s not that much of a problem,' and really being Cleopatra, ‘queen of denial.’ Thank you. Boom," he said, imitating left-leaning media.
Ruhle pushed back on Wilson and argued that the media "regularly" talked about how the Biden administration wasn't doing enough on immigration.
"I can specifically remember when Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida sent those buses of migrants to different cities, different parts of the country which ended up being politically genius for both of them," she said. "The media regularly talked about the fact that Biden was not doing enough in his first two-and-a-half years on immigration."
Ruhle went on to defend the media and referenced her own interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris last year on MSNBC.
Ruhle explained one of the questions she posed to Harris was about immigration, specifically about how voters were feeling frustrated about immigration in their local communities.
"I remember her answer was, ‘Well we had this immigration bill and Donald Trump blocked it.’ And she's right, she's right. Donald Trump did block the bill, but that doesn't address how people in the country feel," Ruhle said.
Ruhle did question Harris' role in helping with the border crisis as she was tasked by former President Biden to deal with the root causes in 2021.
"How about the message from our Vice President?" Ruhle asked at the time. "Where is she? She was supposed to be in charge of all of these migration issues, going to those Northern Triangle countries that's obviously not Haiti."
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Ruhle argued to Wilson that Republicans were successful in being willing to talk about the "unpleasant things that people feel," and pointed out that they're often deemed xenophobic or racist for doing so.