Michael Hastings: Reporters 'Lose Their Minds' Around Obama (VIDEO)

Reporter: Journalists 'Lose Their Minds' Around Obama

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BuzzFeed's Michael Hastings talked about his impressions of the media's relationship to President Obama during an interview with MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Thursday.

Hastings was promoting his e-book "Panic," which recounts his experience covering Obama on the 2012 campaign trail. He talked about a bizarre incident in which a Wall Street Journal reporter tried to interview Obama using a sock puppet.

"It was a puppet that looked like Obama," he said. "[She] put the puppet on her hand and asked the president for an interview ... it was very strange."

He said that Obama made reporters "lose their minds, adding, "They start behaving in ways, you know, that are juvenile and amateurish and they swoon.”

Bashir wondered about Hastings' own bona fides with Obama. Hastings admitted that he, too, had taken the soft route when questioning him.

"Did I ask about drones, did I ask about civil liberties? No, I did not," he said.

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