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Democracy Under Threat: Where Is The Liberal Media?

Anyone whose memory has not been washed clean can recall the liberal media’s not-so-long-ago frequent warnings about threats to democracy. Hop in the time machine and take a brief trip into the not-so-long-ago headlines from the liberal media. The New York Times, 2022:  Democracy Challenged: A Look at the Historic Test on Democratic Norms The New York Times, also 2022:  DEMOCRACY CHALLENGED ‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy PBS, 2021:  2 out of 3 Americans believe U.S. democracy is under threat  The Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin in 2021:  Democracy is backsliding across the globe. The U.S. is part of the problem. The Washington Post analyst Dan Balz 2022:  A year after Jan. 6, are the guardrails that protect democracy real or illusory?  CNN, 2021:  Yes, democracy *really* is in danger  One could go on-and on and on - with similar headlines from the mainstays of the liberal media fretting about the supposed dangers to democracy laid at the feet of Donald Trump and/or his supporters. But now? When millions of Americans perceive with the conviction of the former President that democracy in America is in fact in serious trouble?  Here’s some sample liberal media headlines since the Trump conviction: The New York Times: Biden Declares Trump Verdict a Victory for the Rule of Law The New York Times, editorial board:  Donald Trump, Felon: The former president’s conviction in a New York criminal trial revealed, yet again, why he is unfit for office. Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri mocked:  Donald Trump needs YOUR HELP to get vengeance on the evil RULE OF LAW  CNN:  In a grievance-filled speech riddled with falsehoods, the ex-president insisted he did nothing wrong after his historic conviction And on and on went these headlines post-conviction. Notice anything missing? Like, maybe, just maybe, the palpable concern for democracy that existed in all those earlier headlines? Nope. They aren’t there. Could it possibly be that all that concern for democracy from the liberal media wasn’t - newsflash - real at all?  Now, when millions of Americans perceive the Trump conviction - the conviction of a former President of the United States - as a decided threat to democracy? The headlines about a threat to democracy have -lo and behold - vanished. Which illustrates in vivid form that all those earlier, panicked, headlines in the liberal media were not about a vanishing democracy after all. They were really about the latest defeat in the day of the latest items on the liberal media agenda. Defeats delivered by decidedly democratic means. Now, when millions of Americans, are decidedly alarmed at the prospect of a president being arrested and convicted because he happens to be a conservative? The liberal media yawns and ignores. All of which brings back the memory of these words of wisdom from the long ago 1961 by a then-future President of the United States - Ronald Reagan.  Said Reagan:  But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free. Not for nothing did Reagan’s staff nickname him “The O&W” - The Oldest and Wisest. 

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Trump's Main Opponent: The Media

Yes, it’s President Joe Biden’s name on the 2024 ballot as former President Trump’s opponent. But in reality? In reality, Trump’s main opponent in this presidential election year is the “mainstream” - aka “liberal” - media. In truth, this game of targeting potential Republican presidential nominees or presidents has been played for decades. Hop in the time traveling machine and take a look at some of the coverage faced by a rising GOP star named Ronald Reagan. The New York Times declared that Reagan’s candidacy is “patently ridiculous.” The Times added this of Reagan’s run against then-incumbent GOP President Gerald Ford in 1976: The astonishing thing is that this amusing but frivolous Reagan fantasy is taken so seriously by the news media and particularly by the President (Gerald Ford). It makes a lot of news, but it makes no sense. The left-leaning New Republic was unsparing, one of its columnists writing that:  Ronald Reagan to me is still the posturing, essentially mindless and totally unconvincing candy man that he’s been in my opinion ever since I watched his first try for the Republican nomination evaporate in Miami in 1968,” adding that“Reagan is Goldwater revisited…He is a divisive factor in the party. Then there was Harper’s magazine:  That he should be regarded as a serious candidate for President is a shame and an embarrassment for the country at large to swallow. The Chicago Daily News huffed:  The trouble with Reagan, of course, is that his positions on the major issues are cunningly phrased nonsense — irrationality conceived and hair-raising in their potential mischief… Here comes Barry Goldwater again, only more so, and at this stage another such debacle could sink the GOP so deep it might never recover. Then there was the supposedly pro-GOP Time magazine, co-founded by the decidedly conservative Henry Luce: Republicans now must decide whether he (Reagan) represents a conservative wave of the future or is just another Barry Goldwater calling on the party to mount a hopeless crusade against the twentieth century. Startlingly, National Review - the conservative magazine founded by Reagan’s friend William F. Buckley Jr. - said:  Reagan’s image remains inchoate.… At the outset of his campaign, his image is largely that of the role-playing actor — pleasant on stage, but ill-equipped for the real world beyond the footlights. Reagan does not yet project the presidential image. He is not seen as a serious man. And on and on this kind of media sniping at Reagan went. Moving up to current day, as America moves into its traditional Memorial Day holiday in the middle of the 2024 presidential election between Trump and Biden, it is more than clear that as the media of the day targeted Reagan, today’s media has zeroed in on Trump. Here’s the New York Times pushing the Democrat strategy of focusing on abortion:  This Is the Democrats’ Best Shot in 2024. And They Are Spending Like Crazy on It. The same day a Times columnist was headlining:  Trump’s Taste for Tyranny Finds a Target In the same vein, a Washington Post columnist headlined:   Trump’s fascist talk is what’s ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ No, Trump isn’t Hitler. But his copycat words lead nowhere good. A Post editor opined this in the same issue:  Some rogues tell truths. Trump just isn’t one of them. Across the country the Los Angeles Times was headlining the following this week:    Trump and GOP repeatedly echo Nazi and far-right ideology as they aim to retake White House One could go on - and on and on - with headlines and stories like this that salt the everyday coverage of Trump in the “mainstream” media. (And by all means, don’t forget that similar treatment was dished to then-presidents Nixon and George W. Bush.)  All of which means that, as noted, Joe Biden is not Donald Trump’s sole - or perhaps even major - opponent in 2024.  That other Trump opponent, as was true with Reagan, is the “mainstream” media that isn’t even close to “mainstream” - much less is it fair or objective. What Americans are swamped with 24/7 is an ongoing political assault on the man Republican voters quite voluntarily selected as their presidential nominee. And all of this when it is only the end of May. There is more of this kind of coverage coming Trump’s way - not to mention similar coverage that will be dumped on whomever Trump selects as his vice presidential running mate. As Americans head into the holiday weekend, the obvious wisdom from the media treatment of Reagan and now Trump is: buckle in. And a special thanks to all of those who put on the uniform and gave their lives to protect America’s freedoms. Happy and Thankful Memorial Day.

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The CNN Presidential Debate: A Trump Trap?

The inevitable quadrennial debate announcement has been made. There will be two presidential debates, and Donald Trump let Joe Biden set the rules. This time around CNN will host the first, and ABC the second. And the CNN selection -- with the announcement of moderators as CNN’s own Jake Tapper and Dana Bash -- raises a curious question. That would be: Is the selection of CNN a “Trump Trap”? A trap set by the former President himself? To start, consider the lay of the political land right now. As this is written, the former president is on trial in New York, the trial in the hands of decided Trump haters. The judge is on record as having contributed to President Biden’s re-election campaign. The judge’s daughter Loren Merchan is a left-wing activist actively involved with a digital marketing and fundraising agency that caters to Democrats. The Manhattan District Attorney who brought this case is an elected Democrat. So too the New York State Attorney General, the latter openly campaigning on a promise to get Trump. This is all before we get to the Fulton County Democrat DA Fani Willis and the soap opera that is her prosecution of Trump. And not to be left out is the Biden Justice Department’s Special Counsel Jack Smith, prosecuting Trump over the storage of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate discovered in a raid on the former President’s home. Notably, President Biden has been revealed to similarly have boxes of classified documents stored, haphazardly, in his Wilmington garage -- with, curiously, no surprise raid. He had time to er, "adjust." Whatever the legal results are to be, without doubt all of this taken together has backfired, and backfired big time. Look no further than the crowd said to be 100,000 strong that turned out for Trump’s recent appearance in, of all places, the very blue state of New Jersey.  Then there’s the lineup of Republican members of Congress showing up at the New York courthouse where Trump’s trial is taking place. Suffice to say, any given Member of Congress is a highly political being, and they would never in a blink show up to so obviously support Trump if they thought they would be losing votes by doing so. All of which is to say, the former President has become the very symbol of a President being targeted by the American political and legal Establishment. And the attacks on him have backfired and backfired big time, politically speaking. Along with the attacks from the political and legal establishments, so too, famously, has the liberal “mainstream” media targeted Trump. That would decidedly include CNN. And, safe to say, the American people get it and have reacted with a decidedly negative view. CNN’s ratings have not been good. Leading, among other things, to this barb from the Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon, "Biden and Trump will meet on June 27 on CNN, and one of Biden's debate conditions was not having an audience, so that explains why it's on CNN." Which brings us round to the “Trump Trap” that may be the CNN debate. Full disclosure: CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, the debate moderators, are former colleagues. I like and respect both. But the point here is what is certainly obvious. There is one video clip after another here at NewsBusters of Jake deriding Trump, calling his presidency a “nightmare” and worse. Dana, plainly, is no Trump fan either. God Bless America -- I believe in free speech for Jake, Dana and every other American. Yet the fact here is that this debate will quickly be seen by millions of Americans as Trump versus not just President Biden, but against two left-leaning, Trump-despising members of the Trump despising “mainstream” liberal media as well.  In other words, this debate can be seen as being set up as a “Trump Trap.” Putting the former President on a debate stage with, as noted, not one opponent, but three. And in the current, decidedly heated political environment where Trump’s antagonists at his New York trial as well as his other trials have ignited a tidal wave of support for the former President. His treatment at the hands of Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in this debate could easily do even more of the same. For Trump, this might be similar to the CNN "town hall" with Kaitlan Collins constantly interrupting -- and you know how much CNN staffers and viewers were inflamed over that "platforming" of Trump. Which means? This debate just may turn out to be a well-planned -- by the former President -- “Trump Trap”.  Snaring CNN’s anti-Trump moderators and letting them, in full view of millions of Americans, just be their anti-Trump selves. Only adding to the backfire of support for Trump that is already on display, as in New Jersey just the other day. So prepare the popcorn. This debate will be a fun and instructive night.

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CNN, Media Freak When GOP's Rep. Scott Perry Accurately Ties KKK History To Democrats

Amazing. As my NewsBusters colleague Curtis Houck colleague Curtis Houck headlined:  Election Interference: CNN Uses Audio of Private Briefing to Falsely Smear GOP’s Scott Perry In which Curtis notes CNN’s Annie Grayer has a story based on audio of a private meeting involving, full disclosure, my very own Pennsylvania Congressman, Republican Scott Perry. In which it is alleged that “Perry told colleagues in a closed door briefing that: The KKK in modern times, a lot of young people think somehow it’s a right-wing organization when it is the military wing of the Democratic Party. Decidedly, unabashedly, racist and antisemitic,” Perry said according to the recording. Grayer added that “The KKK is not affiliated in any way with the modern Democratic Party.” Grayer was not alone in flipping out at Perry’s remarks. The Philadelphia Inquirer, the New Republic and The Daily Beast  and others in the liberal media jumped on this as well. The New Republic termed Perry’s remarks “bizarro” while The Daily Beast settled for “bonkers.” In the Inquirer story the reporter quoted "Matt Jordan, director of the Pennsylvania State University News Literacy” who said that after its founding in 1865 by Democrats “it became an extra-legal terror organization that was never the wing of any political party.” Where to start with this wildly ignorant understanding of basic American history? The hard historical fact, per, among many, Columbia University historian Eric Foner is that the KKK was in fact “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease’s description of the Klan was as the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.” Indeed, the Klan was so tied to the Democrats that the party’s 1924 Convention in New York City has been dubbed the “Klanbake” because so many of the delegates were Klan members.  The Klan’s favorite for the presidential nomination that year was one William Gibbs McAdoo, who had served Democrat - and Klan supporter  - President Woodrow Wilson as Secretary of the Treasury. Wilson, recall, was such a staunch Klan supporter that he hosted a White House screening of the pro-Klan, decidedly racist Hollywood blockbuster Birth of a Nation. The Klan hosted a massive convention rally for McAdoo across the Hudson River in New Jersey, replete with burning crosses. When one delegate had the temerity to introduce a resolution for the party platform condemning the Klan, it failed.  Historian Linda Gordon, in her book The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920’s and the American Political Tradition writes:  The results suggested not only how many supported the Klan but how many feared antagonizing it.   In very recent American history, the late Senator Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, was the longest serving member in the entire history of the Congress. Byrd was also the “Exalted Cyclops” of the Klan. He was elected to lead Senate Democrats as both Senate Majority Leader and, in the minority, as Senate Minority Leader.  In 1944, history records that Byrd wrote in a letter to a fellow segregationist Democratic Senator that:  I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds. And who gave the eulogy at Byrd’s funeral? That would be his friend, Delaware Senator Joe Biden. All of which is to say, Congressman Scott Perry was 110% right to mention the tie between the Klan and the Democrats. In fact, segregation, a staunch pillar of the Klan’s platform, was nothing more than what is now quaintly called “identity politics.” Identity politics is, as it were, the son of segregation.

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What Word the Media Refuses to Use For the College Riots: Insurrection

No one who's politically aware can be unaware of January 6, 2021. Tens of thousands of Americans descended on Washington to protest the counts and Covid-related conditions of the 2020 election. A riot took place at the US Capitol. The riot resulted in the charging, per ABC News three years later, of over 1,200 and “incarceration for more than 460 people.”  The coverage since then of that day in the mainstream media is typified by headlines like this from the New York Times:  Jan. 6 Panel Accuses Trump of Insurrection and Refers Him to Justice Dept. Or like this from Forbes:  Jan. 6 Insurrection 2 Years Later: How Many Arrested, Convicted And What Price Donald Trump May Still Pay The Washington Post has an ongoing section titled:  THE JAN. 6 INSURRECTION There’s more of this kind of thing out there. And that’s before you get to Democrats like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden. Here’s NPR on Pelosi:  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Launches Select Committee To Probe Jan. 6 Insurrection And CNN on Biden:  The big lie being told by the former president, and many Republicans who fear his wrath, is that the insurrection in this country actually took place on Election Day. There’s more like this out there in the media, but you get the drift. When the subject of the riot at the Capitol on January 6th comes up, the “I word” is always nearby. So let’s take a moment to check the definition of “insurrection” and move on to the events of our current day and what is curiously missing in the coverage of these multiple upon multiple anti-Israel, anti-Semitic riots on one college or university campus after another. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “insurrection” as follows:“…an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.” As of today, America is awash in multiple upon multiple “acts or instances revolting against civil authority” - the civil authority of one American college or university after another. And the mainstream media coverage is curious indeed.  Here’s a sample headline from the Washington Post:  Riot police and over 2,000 arrests: A look at 2 weeks of campus protests CNN headlined:  What we know about the protests erupting on college campuses across America The CNN story said:   New York CNN  —  College campuses across the United States have erupted with pro-Palestinian protests, and school administrators are trying — and largely failing — to defuse the situation. And on…and on and on…went the media coverage of these riots on multiple college campuses, the resulting arrests and financial damage. Good for them.  But the missing word in all this coverage? The missing word used routinely in the media and by progressive politicians to describe one solitary -- and admittedly decidedly wrong -- riot on January 6, 2021? That would be, of course, “insurrection.” All one has to do is turn on the television or start streaming current network coverage and there is decided violence on display. At Columbia University in New York the insurrectionists smashed windows and occupied the university’s Hamilton Hall. The Los Angeles Times headlined:  Nationwide, police make almost 2,000 arrests at college campuses since protests started All of which is to say that what’s happening collectively on some 70 college campuses across the country - riots, vandalism, violent clashes with police -is decidedly an insurrection against the “civil authority” and “governing” of those colleges and universities.  Yet mysteriously, silence on that fact from the media. Which in turn suggests that because the culprits of January 6 were Trump supporters the media says they were all about insurrection. But when the culprits of infinitely larger riots, replete with violence and attacks on police, involve far-left, anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas students and “outside agitators” - oh well, no big deal. If ever there were a naked example of how liberal media bias operates, there it is. Relentless coverage of “insurrection” for January 6th, (and in fact, no one was ever charged with the actual crime of “insurrection”) shrugging off massive campus unrest as just mere good ole American protests. The good news? Americans are on to the game.  And in the hierarchy of the liberal media’s friends in the Democratic Party, word seeps out about concern on how all of this reflects on President Biden and his re-election chances. As headlined here in the Financial Times:  Campus protests become a political liability for Joe Biden and Democrats Exactly. Which says just why the liberal media is not eager to exacerbate Biden’s problem by describing these events as an “insurrection.” Things are bad enough as they are.