I circled back to Gov. Phil Scott’s November 13 press conference because I was interested in the coverage of his comments about our burnt orange president-elect. VTDigger reported that Scott was urging people to give Donald Trump a chance:

“For the sake of our country, we need to tamp down the division and fear, and we need to at least give him the opportunity to do better and do the right thing.”

It sounded like the pundit class’ evergreen hopes that any minute now, Trump was about to start acting presidential. But when I listened to Scott’s full remarks, I got quite a different impression. Yes, he urged a wait-and-see attitude, but he was also sharply critical of Trump and rested his hopes more on “those who are coming into power with him” than on the president-elect himself. That’s a bold thing to do with a leader who has a proven capacity for vengeance. I thought it was more than a bit courageous on Scott’s part, actually.

Not so much with his comments on the newly-opened, grossly inadequate, and budget-bustin’ family shelters. On that score, he was deeply disingenuous — and the assembled reporters let him get away with it.

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