KRISTEN WELKER, STRAIGHT-A STUDENT

I don't know much about the formative years of Kristen Welker, who began her tenure as host of Meet the Press with a terrible Donald Trump interview. Wikipedia tells me she attended Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia and was a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard. But a look at the interview transcript makes clear that Welker didn't regard it as her job to respond to Trump's lies and factual distortions in real time. What's maddening is that she seems to have been more focused on ticking off the questions in her binder than on the outrageous things Trump was saying.

I don't blame an interviewer for wanting to maintain control, but when you're dealing with someone like Trump, part of the way you take control is to challenge the interviewee. Trump knows he can fire off half a dozen right-wing talking points before a typical mainstream-media interviewer can get his or her bearings. Welker made that easier for him by conducting this interview on the assumption that she could make Trump behave if she behaved and asked him nicely to do the same. She spent more time focusing on that than on what he was saying.

From the transcript, here's Welker futilely attemting to play by the rules, over and over again:

As you know, let’s — But I do want to keep moving forward.

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Let’s stay on track, though, Mr. President. Let’s stay on track with these questions —

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I’m not the one who’s being interviewed. Let’s stay on track —

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Okay. All right, well, let’s stay on track with this question, though.

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But, let me, let me — but Mr. President —

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Mr. President, let me just ask this question, please--

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Let me just ask these questions, and then we can move on to some other topics.

It doesn't work. It doesn't work to be the grown-up version of a straight-A student when you're dealing with Trump, who's never been that kind of person at all, and who's never seen a traditional process he didn't want to warp for his own benefit. Trump repeatedly responded to Welker with falsehoods, and Welker was too focused on her question list to rebut him. And so he won.

There are fact checks of this interview -- NBC did one, though CNN's was better -- and yet there are so many false statements in the interview that no fact check is likely to be comprehensive.

Here's one exchange I'd like to focus on. Trump alleges that January 6 insurrectionists were treated far worse than those who committed violent acts in the 2020 George Floyd protests:

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

They put these guys in jail for 17, 18, and 22 years. They didn’t kill anybody. Some of them never even went into the Capitol. Some of them weren’t even in D.C. And they got a 22- or a 17-year sentence. 16, 18, 15, 22.

KRISTEN WELKER:

Well, more than 1,000 people have been charged, Mr. President.

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Yeah. 1,000 people. How many people — let me ask you this. How many people were charged for destroying Portland? How many people were charged for burning down the police precinct and the courthouse in Minneapolis?

Okay, let's talk about Minneapolis. Wikipedia lists seventeen people who've been convicted of crimes in connection to the George Floyd protests:

Matthew Lee Rupert
...Rupert pleaded guilty to one federal count of arson for the fire at the Sprint store on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis the night of May 28, 2020. He was sentenced in August 2021 to 8.5-year prison sentence and three years of supervised release....

Garret Patrick Ziegler
... He was one of two people charged with firebombing the Dakota County government service center in Apple Valley on May 29, 2020, during the unrest. Ziegler pleaded guilty to one count of adding and abetting arson. He was sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervised released and ordered to each pay $206,000 in restitution....

Fornandous Cortez
... He was one of two people charged with firebombing the Dakota County government service center in Apple Valley on May 29, 2020, during the unrest. Henderson admitted in court that he chose the facility as he had made court appearances there and because he was because angry over the murder of Floyd. He pleaded guilty to arson and was sentenced to six years in prison in 2021 and ordered to pay $206,000 in restitution....

Branden Michael Wolfe
... A large crowd surrounding the police station building the night of May 28, 2020, when it was overrun and set on fire. Wolf pleaded guilty three-and-a-half year prison sentence for the arson charge and was ordered to pay $12 million in restitution....

Samuel Elliott Frey
... Frey was part of a crowd that broke into the Great Health Nutrition store near University Avenue in Saint Paul on May 28, 2020, and set it on fire. Frey pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson. In January 2022, he was sentenced to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay $33,827 in restitution....

McKenzy Ann DeGidio Dunn
... Dunn was part of a crowd that broke into the Great Health Nutrition store in Saint Paul on May 28, 2020, and set it on fire. Dunn pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson. In July 2021, she was sentenced to 180 days of home confinement and three-years probation and ordered to pay $31,000 in restitution....

Montez Terriel Lee Jr.
... Lee pleaded guilty to an arson charge for the fire at the Max It Pawn store on East Lake Street in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020. Surveillance video that night captured him pouring an accelerate around the shop and lighting it on fire. In early 2022, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Oscar Lee Stewart Jr. was killed in the fire, but authorities believed that Lee was unaware that Stewart was trapped inside....

Dylan Robinson
... A large crowd surrounding the police station building the night of May 28, 2020, when it was overrun and set on fire. Robinson pleaded guilty and received a four-year prison sentence for the arson charge and he was ordered to pay $12 million in restitution....

Bryce Michael Williams
...A large crowd surrounding the police station building the night of May 28, 2020, when it was overrun and set on fire. Williams pleaded guilty and received a three-year prison sentence for the arson charge and he was ordered to pay $12 million in restitution....

Matthew Scott White
... White pleaded guilty to one act of arson for starting a fire at a rental car building on University Avenue in Saint Paul that was entirely destroyed by fire on May 28, 2020. White was sentenced to 72 months in prison in June 2021....

Mohamed Hussein Abdi
... Abdi aided Jose A. Felan Jr. in setting fires inside Gordon Parks High School on University Avenue in Saint Paul. He also attempted to set fires at the nearby Discount Tire store. Abdi pleaded guilty in March 2021 to conspiracy to commit arson. In February 2022, he was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to pay $34,000 in restitution....

Alexander Steven Heil
... Heil was part of a large crowd that surrounded the Wells Fargo Bank the night of May 28, 2020. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson for helping fuel fires. He was sentenced to two years in prison in mid 2021....

Marc Bell Gonzales
... Gonzales was part of a large crowd that surrounded the Wells Fargo Bank the night of May 28, 2020. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson for helping set the structure on fire. He was sentenced to 37 months in prison in mid 2021....

Davon De-Andre Turner
... A large crowd surrounding the police station building the night of May 28, 2020, when it was overrun and set on fire. Williams pleaded guilty and received a three-year prison sentence for the arson charge and he was ordered to pay $12 million in restitution....

Jose A. Felan Jr.
... Federal authorities alleged that Felan was responsible for several fires on University Avenue in Saint Paul on May 28, 2020. Felan and Mohamed Hussein Abdi set fires inside Gordon Parks High School. Felan was also captured on security cameras entering and existing the nearby Napa Auto Parts and Goodwill stores on University Avenue. Authorities said he also had a role in the fire at 7-Mile Sportswear. Felan pleaded guilty to arson charges. A federal judge on October 18, 2022, sentenced him to 6.5 years in prison and ordered him to pay $40,000 in restitution....

Mena Dyaha Yousif
... Yousif travelled to Saint Paul with Felan on May 28, 2020, and later helped him evade authorities. Felan committed several acts of arson to businesses and a school along the University Avenue corridor in Saint Paul. Yousif pleaded guilty to the charge of being an accessary after the fact to arson and was sentenced to three years of probation....

Ivan Harrison Hunter
... Hunter was a self-described leader of a local Boogaloo Movement group in Texas. Federal authorities charged him with one count of interstate travel to incite a riot for shooting 13 rounds from an AK-47-style machine gun into the Minneapolis third police precinct building while people were inside, looting it, and helping to set it on fire the night of May 28, 2020. Hunter pleaded guilty in September 2021 and was sentenced to four years in prison in April 2022.

Trump doesn't know any of this, obviously -- but I suspect Welker doesn't either. It matters, because millions of right-wingers are obsessed with the notion that January 6 insurrectionists had the book thrown at them while "Antifa" members got off scot-free for violence and property damage in the summer of 2020. It would be nice if someone in the national media would debunk that idea. But this was just one of many real-time debunkings that weren't going to happen on Kristen Welker's Meet the Press.