© Provided by Washington Examiner Fox News reporter John Roberts vented on Thursday about how the White House is responding to questions about white supremacy and the reaction those questions are getting on social media.
Following a White House press briefing in which the network's chief White House correspondent and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany sparred over the topic, Roberts said in a report, "Stop deflecting. Stop blaming the media. I'm tired of it."
During Tuesday night's debate, President Trump told the Proud Boys, a right-wing group with a history of violence at protests, to "stand back and stand by." When the president was asked if he was willing to condemn white supremacy, he responded, "sure."
When asked a similar question by Roberts during the briefing, McEnany responded, "This has been answered." She proceeded to cite multiple instances in which the president has directly condemned racism.
Roberts pushed back, adding, "But just to clear it up this morning, can you, naming it, make a declarative statement that the president denounces it."
"I just did," she said.
"You read a bunch of quotes from the past," Roberts retorted.
"The president was asked this," McEnany said. "You're contriving a storyline," she added, concluding, "His record on this is unmistakable, and it's shameful that the media refuses to cover it."
McEnany also said that both she and the president, at the time of the debate, didn't know who the Proud Boys were, a claim Trump made on Wednesday.
"It's really interesting to see that the media seems to be the only ones putting the names of these groups into headlines, into media reporting," she said.
In his report after the briefing, Roberts questioned this logic.
"If the president didn't know who Proud Boys were and Joe Biden just threw out the name, if he didn't know who they were, why did he denounce them? Why didn't he say, 'I don't know who they are,'" he said. "'Can you give me a little more information about them?' - and then make a decision about it?"
"For all of you on Twitter who are hammering me for asking that question, I don't care," Roberts said emphatically. "Because it's a question that needs to be asked, and clearly, the president's Republican colleagues a mile away from here are looking for an answer for it, too. So stop deflecting. Stop blaming the media. I'm tired of it."
Shortly after, McEnany retweeted a post from Kyra Phillips, Roberts's wife, who reported yesterday that in remarks to reporters, the president said he denounces white supremacists.
"[John Roberts] I would refer you to your wife's reporting from 21 hours ago ... accurate reporting I cited in the White House Press Briefing," she tweeted.
Tags: News, Fox News, Donald Trump, Kayleigh McEnany, White House, Media
Original Author: Haley Victory Smith
Original Location: Fox's John Roberts hammers critics for deflection on Trump's white supremacy stance: 'I'm tired of it'