Fires and Liars

Guess who the only reporters allowed to ask questions at the latest FEMA press conference were?

If you answered FEMA employees who aren't really reporters, you win the prize.

The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.

Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by "Mike" Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John "Pat" Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin.

It seems weird to do this for addressing issues with the California wildfire response. The excuse for such a ruse was that "these were the questions reporters were asking anyways." I feel like if you have a press conference and only give everyone 15 minutes notice to be there, and then give everyone a listen-only conference number, and then pose people that aren't reporters as reporters, you're up to no good.