It won’t happen. We all know that. The thought that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump might win the election, is too awful to contemplate. It’s like the nightmare we try to suppress with loud music. It’s the second reminder bill we leave in the envelope.
Bad News Day
For those on the left, a Republican win is always bad news; we’re supposed to be depressed at the thought, we’re supposed to send virtual face-palms to one another. Something has changed though. Ever since Trump launched his campaign in August 2015, we’ve gone through the whole gamut of Facebook emoji: smiley-face, winky-face, confused, angry, fearful, and of course, barf.
And now we’re here, trying not to see the forest for the trees.
He might win you know, he just might.
He moved through the campaign like sick through a sick dog, insulting Latinos and Mexicans, the disabled, veterans, women, and at one point, inexplicably, Neil Young. He made gaffes so horrendous that at each stage we sat forward, waiting for the Game Over sign to scroll majestically across the screen in low resolution pixels. It never appeared. Not when it became apparent he was hiring white supremacists, not when it was obvious his ideas would get us all killed. He smiled his smug smile and waved as the effluence refused to stick.
How the hell did this happen?
We Already Know The Answer
Tired cliche though it might be, sometimes, you really can blame the media. CBS Chairman Les Moonves summed up the early media support for Trump in February, when he admitted that although he might not be good for America, Trump was unquestionably:
“Damn good for CBS.”
He added:
“I’ve never seen anything like this… It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going. The money’s rolling in and this is fun,”
That corporations like CBS take the path of least resistance when it comes to shoveling greenbacks down shareholder throats is hardly surprising. It’s what came after the earning-report euphoria that is so unnerving.
Buying The Fourth Estate
You only have to look at the people Trump has surrounded himself with to break into a stress sweat.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire who destroyed Gawker. Stephen Bannon, the antisemitic mastermind behind Breitbart News Network. And then’s there’s disgraced former Fox News supremo Roger Ailes, who is not only one of Trump’s closest advisers, but is also a man known for compiling dossiers on journalists who cross him.
The shift in the media’s attitude towards Trump has been far from subtle. Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski began working for CNN as a political commentator. Any concern that a potential conflict of interests seems to have been ignored.
Meanwhile the Associated Press, riding low after an attack on the Clinton Foundation that was just plain sloppy journalism, turned a 6000 watt spotlight on Trump and found nothing but glowing admiration for Trump and his whole family.
Not One Word Of Truth
What is particularly striking about the above tweet is not that it is bias; it’s that everything mentioned in it is patently false. As Blue Nation Review was quick to point out:
“The Trump family built its fortune on generations of inherited wealth, with Trump and his children removed from manual labor, educated at elite schools, and living their entire lives in luxury.”
That didn’t stop the Associated Press journalist Nancy Benac from writing a story replete with sycophantic fawning about generations of family values, work ethics and a genetic predisposition for too much ambition. Garbage followed garbage, this time as a suggestion that the race was neck and neck in the form of a fake electoral map.
This was all exactly what the Trump camp had been hoping for. Days before, Benac had written a gushing article that described Trump’s new campaign CEO, white supremacist Bannon as a:
“Flamethrower in Cargo Shorts.”
Banec would know. Prior to writing her love-letter to Trump, she met with his entire campaign team. Whatever they told her, it did the trick. The two pieces she wrote on Trump were so egregious in their bare-faced dishonesty that the AP was forced to admit that something had gone horribly wrong with their election coverage.
The sound of shuffling dossiers. That must be a hard one to ignore.
No Conspiracy Here
This is James Bond villain stuff writ large across the sky. We live in a world where Sean Hannity denies he is even a journalist in order to justify his twin role as a Fox News Anchor and adviser to Trump. A world where Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC keeps a Trump tweet framed on his wall. A world where billionaires huddle in dark rooms and decide that truth, just like any other commodity is for sale to the highest bidder.
The media is falling in line behind Trump in ways that are hard to ignore.
But easy to explain.
Trump is buying up positive news coverage.
BuzzFeed has already alleged that Breitbart News has entered into a financial arrangement with Trump. Bannon categorically denied the charge. Still, The fact that Trump feels the need to pay off a news network already sympathetic to his bigoted ideas is enough to make you wonder.
How many of the other usual suspects has Trump bought off?
Watch Hannity pervert the whole point of the fourth estate in this interview with his own client.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmNOHpLeczc
Featured image from YouTube video.
