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Radio Ga Ga
That’s it, yes, it’s war! Forget Israel and Iran’s back and forth, ignore the tanks on Constitution Avenue: the real conflict of the week was the heated Briefing Room scrap between two titans of radio, John Fredericks and April Ryan.
It all kicked off on Wednesday afternoon ahead of the press briefing, when Trump-supporting call-in host Fredericks sidled in and started airing his grievances about how the briefings used to work under the previous Trump administration. He was moaning about how he never got to ask questions due to the focus-pulling antics of CNN’s Jim Acosta and April Ryan, who, sources tell Cockburn, he referred to as the “woman from urban radio.” Fredericks said this… while directly next to Ryan. “He was two inches from me,” she told Cockburn. “We weren’t feet apart. He was right there, right behind me.”
Ryan took issue with Fredericks’s carping and called him out. “He was railing on reporters in there, and the room is made up of reporters. A lot of these people are reporters,” Ryan said. “And I’m sitting there and I’m just listening to him rail, you know, and then he jumps on me. I’m like, ‘I’m not the one.’ I’m saying to myself, ‘I’m not the one.’ And I told him, ‘mind your business’ and leave me out. You know, just leave me alone.”
Fredericks responded by mocking Ryan for her face mask. “Nice mask,” he told her.
“Yeah, for your foul breath,” she replied. “I was standing in between both of them,” the Resilient show’s Richie McGinniss told Cockburn. “I can confirm, his breath was ripe.”
“I don’t know why you wanna start something, I’m here minding my business over here,” Ryan told Fredericks. “I don’t give a damn about your political persuasion, leave me out of your mouth.”
“I see you’re as pleasant as ever,” Fredericks said.
“And baby it works for me, ’cos it ain’t working for you,” Ryan replied. “You’re complaining ’cos my questions are better than yours, so shut it down. I’m a good journalist – a great journalist.”
“That mask just says it all,” Fredericks said. At this point, Ryan pulled down her mask and repeated, “I’m a great journalist, can you hear it?”
“Yes I can,” Fredericks said, chastened.
“Everybody around me felt bad about it because I’m minding my business,” Ryan told Cockburn. “He doesn’t know me. If I would have stood there and not said anything, he thought he could bully me. But one thing you’re not going to do is bully me, OK?”
“He blamed me and Jim Acosta for him not getting a question during the first Trump administration,” Ryan continued. “Was it my fault that you didn’t get a question yesterday? No. You blaming little ol’ me for you not getting the question. But what happened yesterday? I didn’t block you from getting a question.
“I go in there and do what I gotta do. I come in there to do my job. I’ve been there a long time. I know some people. I don’t know some people. I try to stay in my lane. I don’t want to cause any problems. Just minding my business, to do my work, and along the way, work happens. Even if I don’t get called on, I still do my stories. I still break stories.
“What has more efficacy than he does, in my opinion, is a mouse breaking wind at the Indianapolis 500.”
Ryan has been covering the White House since the late Nineties and was the National Association of Black Journalists’ Journalist of the Year in 2017. But she didn’t see the incident as a clash between old and new media. “I don’t have a problem with them,” she told Cockburn. “They’ve been welcomed. And I’m gonna be honest with you, she’s absolutely right,” Ryan said, presumably referring to Natalie Winters’s comments. “There are some internet organizations that have bigger audiences than some of these standard TVs and that has changed the game.”
Ryan is not the only journalist to take issue with Fredericks. “He always pushes into the groups of reporters who have waited for over an hour and then takes good spots and won’t leave,” a female new media reporter told Cockburn. “And then flatters and compliments the female ones. Aggressively.” Not in April’s case apparently…
I spy…
Watch what you say! Which popular DC restaurant found four bugs on a recent routine security sweep? The high-end eatery is stepping up its checks as a result…
On our radar
PRINCE OF PERSIA “The people I was dealing with are dead, the hardliners,” President Trump said regarding US negotiations with Iran after last night’s Israeli attack. “They didn’t die of the flu, they didn’t die of Covid.”
MOSTLY PEACEFUL? A number of “No Kings” protests opposing the Trump administration are anticipated nationwide this weekend.
PADDY WHACK Senator Alex Padilla of California was dragged out of a Department of Homeland Security press conference and detained by FBI agents after interrupting a Kristi Noem press conference yesterday.
Jim class heroes
Speaking of Jim Acosta: Cockburn was amused to see the former CNN host turned Substacker is appearing on a panel at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday. It’s called “Democracy on the Line: Standing Up to the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Free Speech.”
Acosta was notorious for his Briefing Room grandstanding against President Trump during the first administration – and has since been replaced by Kaitlan Collins. He was loud in denouncing the White House after they temporarily banned the Associated Press from Oval Office briefings and boarding Air Force One.
Alongside him: CAP president and former Biden advisor Neera Tanden, who is rallying her troops on X to “protest peacefully this Sat,” citing Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles. Cockburn wonders whether anyone plans to ask Tanden how concealing the extent of President Biden’s decline led to the second Trump presidency and its resulting “attacks on free speech”…
Brit large
It’s a triple birthday celebration this weekend: as well as President Trump and the US Army, tomorrow is King Charles III of England’s official birthday. To mark the occasion, the British Embassy hosted a lavish garden party Thursday evening. Somehow Cockburn made the guest list. Attendees who braved the sweltering heat were treated to separate bars for Scotch, gin and non-alcoholic cocktails, as well as English sparkling wine from Berry Bros. and Rudd. Your correspondent purloined four bottles. In his remarks, British Ambassador Lord Mandelson drew out the parallels between the King and the President, as well as hailing the “beautiful trade deal” the UK struck with America.
In attendance: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Representatives Robert Aderholt, Steve Cohen, Debbie Dingell, Zach Nunn, Dana Bash, Martha MacCallum, Dasha Burns, Jonathan Martin, David Chalian, Roma Daravi, Raheem Kassam and Bart Hutchins, Ben Domenech, Antonia Hitchens, Rachel Rizzo, Tom Rogan, Sarakshi Rai, Andrew Hale, Conor Stringer, Katy Balls, Reinaldo Avila and Jock the “Ambassadog.”
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