President Trump drew bipartisan outrage from lawmakers and media outlets Monday after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and lashing out at his own intelligence agencies over the investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, calls the Trump and Putin press conference “bizarre and surreal,” but says the media reaction lacked perspective: “I think that people kind of lost their bearings.”
AMY GOODMAN: Katrina vanden Heuvel, you’re the person who credentialed Sam Husseini, or your news organization, The Nation —
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: The Nation.
AMY GOODMAN: — credentialed Sam. Can you talk about what happened yesterday?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Well, I can talk about the importance of a journalist like Sam Husseini or a journalist like Amy Goodman or Juan González in a culture in which tough questions are rarely asked, whether at press conferences or in other formats. These are times when the comfortable should be afflicted by tough, tough questions. I remember — dates me — the run-up press conference with George W., the run-up to the Iraq War. There was not a single tough question. Maybe Helen Thomas tried. And I think the idea of journalists as lapdogs or stenographers to power is a failure, a malfunction of our democracy, which is already, as we’ve learned, under siege.
So I think Sam Husseini has a long record of asking tough questions. He goes to State Department conferences. He also does something quite clever. I don’t think he does it anymore, but Stakeout.com, a project he started. He would go to the studios, where, as you know — you’ve done those shows, Amy, the Sunday talk shows, where you don’t learn much. You get talking points. And he would ask — try to ask tough questions outside. I believe he got suspended from the National Press Club in 2011 for asking pointed questions of a Saudi foreign minister or Saudi…