Laugh Riot

Those of you following along at home already may have seen the clip of Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes telling Wolf Blitzer that riots aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Mediaite has a good summary plus video of what went down Wednesday on CNN:

Trump warned of riots if the GOP brokers away his nomination, and Hughes told Wolf Blitzer this afternoon that people would of course be angry. She argued, “Riots aren’t necessarily a bad thing if it means it’s because it’s sitting there and fighting the fact that our establishment Republican party has gone corrupt and decided to ignore the voice of the people.”

Blitzer asked her if she seriously would want riots. Hughes responded, “It’s not riots as in a negative thing.”

I was watching the segment live, and after they came back from break, Wolf did a strange thing. He encouraged Hughes to change her rhetoric. And as she did, she came up with a different definition for the word “riot.” It’s clear she’s reading off something as she cites this “technical” variation. Fast forward to 6:55 and watch until about 8:15:

Hughes found her new definition of “riot” from Oxford Dictionaries. It’s not tough to Google. However, when Trump said there will be riots, Hughes’ convenient second definition definitely is not what he meant. In fact, it doesn’t even make sense as a possibility. Just look at the sample sentences:

I couldn’t decide what bugged me more about the whole charade: that Wolf editorialized in an effort to help Hughes sound less insane or the fact that he let her even dumber explanation slide.

I know it’s very likely Trump is going to be the Republican nominee, and I know the media then is going to be compelled to pretend he’s not a complete maniac. But he is. And the ridiculous twisted explanations that come out of his surrogates and spokespeople have to be challenged.

Journalists are supposed to research and report facts, and when someone says something incorrect, it’s more than okay to refute it. It’s mandatory. It’s the job.

Or at least it used to be.