Erik Wemple Opinion Sarah Huckabee Sanders: No one elevates North Korea like the U.S. media!

Erik Wemple Opinion Sarah Huckabee Sanders: No one elevates North Korea like the U.S. media!

By Erik Wemple March 9

CNN.com

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New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof lays it out: “[President Trump] has given North Korea what it has long craved: the respect and legitimacy that comes from the North Korean leader standing as an equal beside the American president.”

During Friday’s White House press briefing, Fox News Radio’s Jon Decker put this very concern to press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “[Kim Jong Un] has starved his own people, he’s murdered his own people, you could say he’s responsible for the death of Otto Warmbier, why put him on the same stage as the president of the United States?”

It sounded as if Sanders was ready for this very objection:

“The president wants to make sure that we denuclearize the peninsula and that we’re securing and helping have a safer world. I’m glad that you guys are acknowledging a lot of the problems of North Korea because, just a couple of weeks ago, a lot of members in the press were actually elevating North Korea and some of the members of the regime in comparing them to people in the United States and in this administration. I think that is actually what put North Korea on a similar stage. No action by this administration has even remotely demonstrated a level of rise that the media did during the Olympics and through some of those stories.”

There was little doubt about the “media” activities to which Sanders was referring. Staples of Beltway media sent home dispatches from the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang regarding the presence of the North Korean leader’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, and cheerleading contingents in the stands at major venues. “Kim Jong Un’s sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics,” headlined CNN in a much-criticized article. The Post also generated some mocking social-media postings with this headline: “The ‘Ivanka Trump of North Korea’ captivates people in the South at the Olympics.” The New York Times, likewise for this tweet:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/03/09/sarah-huckabee-sanders-no-one-elevates-north-korea-like-the-u-s-media/?utm_term=.005c4a200635

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