After four years of “speaking truth to power,” the mainstream news media effectively lined up to cheer Joe Biden’s first Cabinet appointees.
Biden on Tuesday introduced his picks for six key foreign policy and national security positions: John Kerry for climate czar, Tony Blinken for secretary of state, Jake Sullivan for national security advisor, Alejandro Mayorkas for secretary of homeland security and Linda Thomas-Greenfield for U.N. ambassador, Avril Haines as director of national intelligence.
- The Democrat also reportedly plans to nominate former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen to become Treasury secretary.
Prominent journalists, clearly relieved by the apparent end of the Donald Trump’s “America First” presidency, hailed Biden’s liberal establishment nominees as a “dream team,” in the words of diplomat and Washington Post columnist Michael McFaul.
Here are five of the most flagrant displays of partisan fandom by the media:
1. Martha Raddatz, ABC News’ chief foreign correspondent, described Biden’s nominees as “deeply experienced,” “humble,” “life-long public servants” and “not political.”
- Raddatz also praised the diversity of the group: Blinken is Jewish, Mayorkas would be the first Latino secretary of homeland security and Haines would be the first female national intelligence head.
2. Andrea Mitchell, the head of international coverage at NBC News, similarly reported that Biden’s Cabinet’s picks promised to be “not political,” which she said was “a big change.”
3. Yamiche Alcindor, the “PBS NewsHour” White House correspondent, said the team “looks like America,” as Biden has promised his Cabinet would, and she seemed to agree with what a Democratic source told her.
- “This also felt like ‘The Avengers,'” she quoted the source as saying, referring to the Marvel Comics franchise. “It felt like we’re being rescued from this craziness that we’ve all lived through for the past four years, and now here are the superheroes to come and save us all.”
4. Julian Borger, in a profile published in The Guardian on Monday, called Blinken “a born internationalist,” and compared him favorably to “domestic politician” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
- “[Blinken] went to school in Paris, where he learned to play the guitar (he played Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall at graduation) and play football [soccer], and harboured dreams of becoming a film-maker. Before entering the White House under Barack Obama, he used to play in a weekly soccer game with US officials, foreign diplomats and journalists, and he has two singles, love songs titled Lip Service and Patience, uploaded on Spotify,” Borger wrote.
- “All those contacts and the urbane bilingual charm will be targeted at soothing the frayed nerves of western allies, reassuring them that the US is back as a conventional team player. The foreign policy priorities in the first days of a Biden administration will be rejoining treaties and agreements that Donald Trump left.”
5. John F. Harris, a founding editor at Politico, affectionately ribbed the nominees in magazine article published on Tuesday under the headline “Biden’s Team of Careerists.”
- Biden “tends to have crushes” on “the Washington professional with impeccable credentials from elite institutions,” Harris observed.
Conservative commentators, meanwhile, mocked the media spectacle from the sidelines and predicted disaster.
- “Today, the media celebrate the return of the old normal,” Ben Shapiro wrote in a column on Wednesday.
- “That celebration is likely to again result in a backlash they can’t control. And they’ll be just as puzzled as ever about why everyone else wasn’t as overjoyed as them about the return of the establishment Democratic swamp.”
