I have done an excellent job of not overreacting to every - ok, almost any - Trump nincompoopery. I assume (read: hope like hell) it will all somehow work out, but I do have to say something. Regarding history rhyming*, one issue has risen to the fore even ahead of the inauguration. The press.
I have stated that Hungary followed the same trajectory as Putin's Russia regarding the Press. In Hungary, there was a slow takeover of the press. Either you agreed with the ruling party, or the party forced your company to sell the assets (paper or TV) to more compliant and friendly owner.
The United States is following a similar trajectory but with a nice "free enterprise" twist. Our press is bending to DJT super early. Consider these different but complementary trends.
Fox News already follows the Trumpian line. So do the much smaller Newsmax and OWE TV. As does most of talk radio and a majority of the "bro" podcasts. That is not new.
Then, right before the election, two previously independent newspapers, the Washington Post and LA Times were directed by their billionaire owners to strike endorsements of Harris. It seemed a hedge against Trump winning. And - if you looked for it -the first step in acquiescing to Trump's view.
- UPDATE from NYTimes: The owner of The L.A. Times, the billionaire pharmaceutical and biomedical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, killed an editorial criticizing Trump’s cabinet picks and urging the Senate not to allow recess appointments.
After the election, NBC decided to drop the MSNBC news site, which was very liberal.
During the election, Trump sued ABC's George Stephanopoulos for stating Trump had been convicted of rape. In fact, he had been convicted of sexual assault - twice. The lawsuit would have been an annoyance, but ABC would have won.
As you may remember, a jury last year found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll. In a memorandum, the judge in the case explained that while a jury didn’t find that Trump had raped Carroll, it was operating under New York criminal law, which defines rape solely as “vaginal penetration by a penis.” It did find that he’d forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” wrote the judge. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.
Instead, ABC settled for $15 million last weekend. The "news" organization greed to give the President $15 million and retract the statement - NOT correct the text from "rape" to "sexual assault", but to expunge the entire thing and apologize. The ABC News nose is quite brown. This was not a financial decision, ABC has won similar cases in the past. It was a uniquely political decision.
Trump and his cronies have not threatened to sue anyone who posts negative things about them, true or not. With his ABC win, he promised to sue other media outlets that opposed him in the race. Today, he followed up by suing an Iowa pollster that projected a win for Harris in Iowa. He has sued her for election interference for getting her polling wrong. This is just intimidation and using the courts to bankrupt the media.
Neither the Washington Post - a world-respected newspaper - nor the LA Times can find a new head of The Editorial and Opinion sections that are respected and still will suck up appropriately.
ABC News' kissing of the ring was a major second step of suckery.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled amusement.
*Based on the saying, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
No comments:
Post a Comment