Greene opens by going out of his way to defend President Obama from criticism Obama has received over his handling of the Louisiana disaster. The flooding occured while Obama was on a 16-day vacation in Martha's Vineyard, where he managed to play 10 rounds of golf.

Much of the criticism compared Obama's response (or lack thereof) to that of the George W. Bush Administration's handling of the flooding in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Bush was widely criticized for allegedly failing to engage in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath and for a slow overall response and alleged ineptitude during efforts to help New Orleans recover.

The critics to which Greene referred have also chided media pundits for failing to criticize Obama's vacation in the same way Bush was continually raked over the coals by the mainstream media following Katrina. (By the way, if you're interested in that aspect, click here or here for further details.)

This story was supposed to be an interview of U.S. Rep. Graves. However, before Greene even started interviewing Graves, he first spent time defending President Obama from his critics, and he also threw a subtle dart at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, by making sure to tell us Trump's visit to Louisiana in the wake of the flooding "brought its share of security and logistical wrangling."

However, I can find no evidence of that in news reports. Greene also failed to report that, two days before the interview, Governor Edwards told CNN that Trump's visit was helpful, but Greene chose not to mention that, for some reason. In fact, regarding the Trump visit, Greene had a choice of three options:

1. Don't mention the Trump visit at all, since it's not relevant, or
2. Tell listeners that Trump's visit was helpful, according to Louisiana's governor (a Democrat), or
3. Tell us that Trump caused security and logistical problems with his visit, which is an unsubstantiated claim designed to take pressure off of President Obama and make Trump look bad at the same time.

Greene chose option 3, of course. The mainstream media can never resist the urge to malign Republicans, even if reality must be skewed in the process, and especially when they're trying to counterbalance bad news or criticism about one of their left-wing heroes (like Barack Obama).

That comment by Graves leads me to believe that his impression of the interview's purpose would be to illustrate the extent of the disaster and the dire consequences facing Louisianans whose lives have been devastated. I can easily imagine such an impression being bestowed upon Graves by whoever it was at NPR who set-up the interview. Graves might not have agreed to the interview if he knew Greene would use the occasion to shamelessly attack him and the Republican Party.

There's really only one way Rep. Graves could answer that question. Greene used the question to create a premise that he will later use to attack Republicans and fiscal conservatives. That premise is "You feel like this disaster in your congressional district has not been given enough attention."

We're now 2 minutes and 38 seconds into the interview, and Greene has just asked two softball questions: (1) What does the devastation look like, and (2) What are you telling constituents. These are basic, boilerplate questions, which Greene seems to be using as filler, to have at least something in the interview that doesn't attack Republicans.

Perhaps Greene asked those softball questions to fully disarm Graves before launching his attack, which began with the very next question and endured throughout the remaining 3 minutes and 11 seconds of the interview.

Here we go. Greene quickly shifted from softball to hardball and specifically created another premise: "Republicans are often very wary of federal spending in times of disasters." This second premise painted Republicans in a negative light, by claiming Republicans don't like spending money on much-needed disaster relief, and then Greene asked Graves a question based on that premise.

This is a favorite tactic continually used by mainstream media when dealing with conservatives and Republicans. If the person being interviewed answers the question outright, they're basically giving validity to the premise and agreeing that it's true, simply by answering the question that relies on the premise.

Most people are unaware of this tactic and don't think about questioning the premise before answering. As you'll see below, Rep. Graves makes the mistake of proactively agreeing with the premise, seemingly unaware that Greene is using it to attack him and the Republican Party.

With this question, Greene has moved on to his next line of attack, which was to remind us that many Republicans in the U.S. House (including three from Louisiana) opposed a $50.5 billion spending bill that was originally designed to provide relief funding to northeastern states that suffered flooding from Superstorm Sandy.

This portion of the discussion, in my view, was the whole purpose behind Greene's decision to interview a Republican member of Congress from Louisiana. Without that angle, I doubt NPR and Greene would have conducted the interview at all.

Furthermore, it's obvious Greene had prepared himself to ask this question. He stated unequivocally that "members of the Louisiana delegation" opposed the Sandy relief bill, which means Greene researched ahead of time in order to use that fact against Graves and his fellow Republicans. Greene did not make up this question on the spot – this attack was an ambush that was planned ahead of time.

Greene's attack forced Graves to adopt a defensive posture at this point, and Graves actually did a pretty good job of fending off the attack. Graves made two main points: (1) He alluded to the notion that the Sandy relief bill might have been "over-funded," and (2) He asserted that Congress has a duty to tailor a response to the particular disaster at hand.

Notably, Greene completely ignored Rep. Graves' allusion to the "over-funding" of the Sandy relief bill. There was 1 minute and 9 seconds left in the interview at this point, so Greene could have acknowledged that issue if he'd wanted to. However, he would never do that, because the idea that Louisiana Republicans might have had good reason to oppose the Sandy relief package did not support the narrative that Greene was trying to advance, so of course he ignored it.

I cannot ignore it, however, and neither would any responsible journalist who wanted to draw a valid comparison. A quick Internet search produces many hits about the Sandy "over-funding" situation. Click here or here for two examples.

In a nutshell, the final version of the Sandy relief bill was stuffed full of pork-barrel spending on projects that had nothing to do with Sandy relief. That's why many Republicans didn't support it and ended up voting against it.

However, as The Los Angeles Times points out, Louisiana Republicans did vote for an initial $17 billion package for Sandy relief but later refused to vote for the final bill after many billions in pork had been added. Greene notably omitted these two very pertinent but inconvenient facts.

In doing so, Greene did a huge disservice to his listeners, Rep. Graves, and the other Louisiana Republicans in question, by hiding these facts during the interview, even after Rep. Graves alluded to the bill's "over-funding." Omitting these pieces of the story created a false impression of reality in the minds of listeners, and that false impression was used by Greene to attack Republicans. Whenever NPR or anyone else in the mainstream media does this sort of thing, it always serves left-wing interests.

Lastly, NPR's Greene indicated that Louisiana lawmakers "joined others in stopping that federal aid." That did not happen. Even though many Republicans voted against the unnecessarily pork-laden Sandy relief package, the bill still passed both the House and the Senate and was enacted. The federal aid was not "stopped."

So, not only did Greene turn this interview into a biased attack on Republicans, he even went so far as to mislead NPR listeners to advance his narrative, and he did it more than once.

With that question, Greene continued his attack against fiscal conservatives. The question was based on a combination of the two premises Greene had created earlier: "You feel like this disaster in your district has not been given enough attention," and "Republicans are often very wary of federal spending in times of disasters."

On what basis did Greene formulate that second premise? He gave no evidence to support it. His only example (the Sandy relief bill) doesn't hold water. As I pointed out above, opposition to the final version of the bill was caused by all those billions of non-Sandy pork, not the bill's funding for Sandy's victims – a fact that Greene purposefully chose to hide from us.

This question from Greene seems designed for the sole purpose of portraying Graves and other fiscal conservatives as hypocrites who abandon conservative spending principles when the money in question would be spent in their own backyards. However, it didn't fly. Graves' answer (below) was probably the best answer any fiscal conservative could have given.

In any event, the question had nothing to do with the devastation caused by the flooding and the impact it's having on the people of Louisiana. By this point in the interview, Greene had dropped all pretense of even remembering any of that. He was focused 100-percent on attacking Republicans and fiscal conservatives.

Wow. With that answer, Graves did a terrific job fending off Greene's latest assault. Graves pretty much hit a home run with this answer, so much so that Greene moved on to a different angle with his next question.

Greene was down to his final question, and he used it to (once again) address the issue of high-profile visits to disaster-stricken areas. Remember, Obama had been criticized for failing to visit Louisiana in a timely manner. On the other hand, Trump actually came out looking pretty good by visiting the area before Obama did.

Those outcomes were probably difficult for the left-leaning mainstream media to accept. Greene seems to have been bothered quite a bit because he touched on the issue twice during this piece.

This time, Greene used the "distraction" element as the basis for the question, which tacitly implies that Trump created a distraction while Obama, in his wisdom, chose not to.

Greene specifically chose this angle. He could have asked, "Is it a distraction or is it helpful?" That would have given equal weight to both the positive and the negative. That wasn't Greene's goal, it seems. Neutrality would be counterproductive to Greene's left-leaning narrative, so he chose to frame the question in a negative sense, of course.

Once again, however, Rep. Graves handled the question well (below).

Have you ever noticed that, during an interview, whenever someone gives or starts to give an answer to one of these MSM reporters that the reporter doesn't like, the reporter will often interject a little "Mmm-hmm" or "Okay" into the answer, trying to throw off or hurry the respondent. This happens quite a lot when a Republican or conservative is being interviewed.

Instead of following Greene's lead, Rep. Graves separated Trump from Obama and then praised Trump while pointing out that a president really must visit a disaster-stricken area in order to truly understand everything. That was a well-worded answer because it was not an outright criticism of the President, but it maintained the context of criticism that's been directed toward Obama's failure to cut his vacation short and visit Louisiana promptly.

After Rep. Graves successfully fended off Greene's final, loaded question, Greene brought the ambush – I mean interview – to an end.