"Stupid Question"

There are no stupid questions. There are only stupid answers. -- Pug Mahoney

   Reporters ask many questions, many of them obvious, some subtle. But regardless whether a government official believes a question to be intrusive or insubordinate, a generally appropriate response is to answer the question or, as many politicians often do, give an evasive response or switch to another topic.
   Political folk with some grains of sense are aware that reporters ask questions because that's their duty. Sometimes the questions have little or nothing to do with what the politician perceives as important, but the reality is that he does not get to decide what questions journalists get to ask.
   And more important, to insult and demean the folks with sharp pencils, access to a keyboard and printing presses or broadcast facilities can only backfire.
   Journalists have thick skins, and insults slide off. But they also have long memories, and how they handle a news story is for reporters and editors to decide, not for politicians.
   Unfortunately, some in government (and corporate offices also) have not learned that, and regularly insult and abuse journalists and their news outlets when they don't like the coverage.
   For all his years dealing with news media, in business, in politics and in government, the current president of the United States has yet to learn this lesson: You do not control what reporters write, what TV anchors say, and certainly not what questions they put to you in a public forum.
   Perhaps the most egregious example recently was when a reporter with ABC News asked the president whether he was considering a pardon for his attorney Michael Cohen, who is currently the focus of an investigation by the special counsel investigating various aspects of the recent presidential campaign and whether there was interference from Russia.
   The response from the president, live on national television, was a glare toward the journalist and two words: "Stupid question."
   It can be debated whether the question was in fact stupid, but the background is that several pardons have already been issued by this president, including one to a man whose sentence had already been commuted. So a pardon had little practical effect, except as a possible signal to others to remain loyal to him, and if convicted they would be pardoned.
   All things considered, it was a valid question about a continuing news story. The question, therefore, was not stupid.
   What was stupid was to insult a reporter on national television.
   But given the attitudes, utterances and tweets of recent months against those who displease him, he's not likely to change.
   What is likely to change, however, is that coverage of the insults will become more intense and more focused.