On Monday, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was interviewed by ABC 12 in Flint, Michigan. The interview can be seen in the video embedded in this post but it has since been removed from the station’s website. The reporter conducting the interview asks Ryan if the United States has a gun problem. Ryan responds, “this country has a crime problem.” The reporter then asked Ryan to clarify his answer and he said that the country has “good, strong gun laws, but we have to make sure we enforce our laws.”
Ryan then continues to say the following:
“We have lots of laws that aren’t being properly enforced. We need to make sure we enforce these laws. But the best thing to help prevent violent crime in the inner cities is to bring opportunity in the inner cities, is to help people get out of poverty in the inner cities, is to help teach people good discipline, good character. That is civil society. That’s what charities, and civic groups, and churches do to help one another make sure that they can realize the value in one another.”
After Ryan finishes his answer the reporter from the station asks Ryan the following question: “And you can do all that by cutting taxes? By…with a big tax cut?”
Ryan answers with, “Those are your words, not mine.” Then, someone not visible on the video tells the reporter that the interview is complete, saying to the interviewer, “thank you very much, Sir.”
You then can see Ryan stand, take off the microphone, and say to the interviewer, “That was kind of strange. You’re trying to stuff words in people’s mouths?”
BuzzFeed received a statement from a Ryan spokesman, Brendan Buck, about the interview. The statement said:
“The reporter knew he was already well over the allotted time for the interview when he decided to ask a weird question relating gun violence to tax cuts. Ryan responded as anyone would in such a strange situation. When you do nearly 200 interviews in a couple months, eventually you’re going to see a local reporter embarrass himself.”
The way Ryan reacted to the interview lines up with his idea that the media displays ‘inherent’ bias. He spoke with Chris Wallace of Fox News earlier in the month that “as a conservative, I’ve long believed and long felt that there’s an inherent media bias. And I think anybody with objectivity would believe that that’s the case.”
