The tone of last night's Newsnight wasn't out of the blue, of course. The previous night's edition had been little better.
Its blurb on the Newsnight website reads:
The most striking aspect of its coverage was the very sharp contrast between the way Emily Maitlis treated her two two-Trump guests and her anti-Trump guests. (No prizes for guessing which side came off worst).
Though supposedly discussing general matters, the first - Breitbart's Joel Pollack - was repeatedly 'put in the dock' by Emily over the wickedness of Breitbart. The second - following on from a very gentle interview with the Muslim Khan family who Donald Trump famously/infamously clashed with and who hold a very big grudge against him - was pro-Trump Muslim, Asra Nomani, who the incredulous-sounding Emily 'put in the dock' over how it was on earth possible for any Muslim to support Mr Trump given all the "deeply offensive" stuff he's said about Muslims.
The final feature was a Kirsty Walk interview with the man who in the late '80s and early '90s was probably BBC Two's public intellectual of choice: later-to-be-Canadian Liberal Party-leader Michael Ignatieff - the ultimate left-liberal.
That he was Ian Katz's choice to sum everything up is very Guardian/BBC.
(Nice chap though, and always worth hearing. Plus, Kirsty actually did try to put proper devil's advocate questions to him).
No mention by the BBC of the Khan familys skin in the game..
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