He explains very well, too. And he brings Kal-El, who you’ll see on Mr. Willis’s page.
JUL 16, 2024
David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros./Discovery, the company that owns CNN, tipped his hand about who he wants in the White House in an interview given at the Sun Valley Conference of media and tech bigwigs in Idaho recently:
Asked about the upcoming presidential election, Zaslav said it mattered less to him which which party wins, as long as the next president was friendly to business.
“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to to be even better,” he said.
Zaslav’s comments effectively work as an endorsement of Donald Trump’s campaign, because the Biden administration is not handing out rubber stamps to big business seeking to consolidate (and harm consumers). Trump’s four years in office saw his administration hand over power to mega-business, from cutting safety regulations, rolling back environmental standards, and of course rewarding them with a massive tax cut that didn’t stimulate the overall economy at all.
The media industry, in particular, thrived during Trump’s time. Instead of sleep-inducing policy wonkery as they had to contend with during President Barack Obama’s two-terms, Trump lurched from drama to drama and crisis to crisis. When he wasn’t feuding with celebrities or Saturday Night Live, he was pissing off NATO allies, mismanaging a pandemic, or bowing to North Korea’s dictatorial regime. And of course there was the steady stream of racism and misogyny.
Four years into President Joe Biden’s time in office, it is clear to anyone with open eyes that the mainstream press desperately wants to go back to the good old days. They want easy stories and a torrent of clicks to their websites and eyeballs on their broadcasts. They want to be able to churn out a series of bestsellers, compiling information they should have been reporting in newspapers and broadcasts, packaged as buzzworthy scoops to juice book sales.
Like Zaslav, the mainstream media – the New York Times, CNN, Associated Press, the networks and the rest — tipped their hands as they took part in the post-debate media orgy. Biden’s performance was putrid, as he has admitted, but the coverage went above and beyond with the press beating the drumbeat for Biden to drop out of the race louder than a Taylor Swift concert extravaganza.
The press misses Donald, their meal ticket, their path to riches and an easy day at the office. He makes a big show of speaking negatively about his coverage, but like a wrestler working a gimmick to get the audience out of their seats, everyone in this pantomime is playing a role.
There is a symbiotic relationship between Trump and the press that has more in common with the grotesque setup in the horror film Human Centipede than either side of the equation would ever admit in public. Trump feeds them outrage and they process that outrage and generate coverage, which Trump then consumes and produces more outrage out of his other end. And again and again.
Historically speaking, the Democratic Party and liberalism has been annoyingly naive about this dynamic. There is a shared belief that the press, despite everything we’ve witnessed — the 2000 election, birtherism, the Iraq War, Trump’s first campaign and so much more — that the press gives a damn. The notion that they collectively care about the truth and share the concerns of average citizens about what life under an authoritarian Republican presidency would look like is betrayed by the consistent message of their Trump coverage: “We want to go back.”
There may finally be signs of the dam breaking, however. In his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, President Biden politely pressed back on the tenor of the coverage of the debate.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Lester, look, why don’t you guys ever talk about the 18 — the 28 lies he told? Where — where are you on this? Why doesn’t the press ever talk about that? Twenty-eight times, it’s confirmed, he lied in that debate. I had a bad, bad night. I wasn’t feeling well at all. And — and I had been — without making — I screwed up. But —
LESTER HOLT: The re — I just ask the question because — the — the idea that you may or may not have seen what some of these other folks have seen. You’re not on the same —
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I didn’t have to see it — I was there. (LAUGH) I didn’t have to see it. I was there. And by the way, seriously, you won’t answer the question, but why doesn’t the press talk about all the lies he told? I haven’t heard —
LESTER HOLT: Well, we —
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: — anything about that.
LESTER HOLT: We — we have reported many of the issues that came of that —
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: No you haven’t —
LESTER HOLT: — that debate.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: No you haven’t.
LESTER HOLT: Well, we’ll provide you with them.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: God love you.
Media “reporter” Brian Stelter, who has made clear that his role in the ecosystem is not as a reporter but as an advocate for the mainstream press, raised a fuss about the exchange on social media.
“Biden falsely claims that ‘the press’ hasn’t covered Trump’s lies,” he wrote.
But do you see the trick there? He converts Biden’s critique of the media’s post-debate coverage, which was all about Biden’s poor performance and not at all about the torrent of lies Trump told during the event, into another attack on Biden.
The press does not like criticism from the left. The left is supposed to just suck it up and take it and bow before them. Simply because the left side of the aisle does not share Trump’s position that the free press is the “enemy of the people,” that is supposed to be carte blanche for lies, unfair coverage, and agenda-based reporting against Democrats. Nonsense.
Biden was well within bounds to push back on the media’s reprehensible behavior and in fact he should have been more forceful. Because in this election — as in past elections — the Republican Party isn’t his only opposition.
The people who continually carry water for specious and debunked right-wing attacks, like the Swift Boat lies of 2004 or the Willie Horton smears of 1988 or the email faux scandal of 2016 are all the same people: The media.
The Republican Party and conservatives have a steadfast ally in the mainstream press that amplifies their bad faith attacks without context, who abdicate their roles as journalists or fact checkers to operate as stenographers for whatever dumb thing Republicans come up with. When George W. Bush and his team wanted to sell lies about weapons of mass destruction, they didn’t go to Fox News. The went to the New York Times.
Of course the press should investigate and press back on claims from Democrats, and when Democrats lie or massage the facts, the news media should take them to the rhetorical woodshed. That is their job. But for too long they have operated with two sets of standards for the two parties.
What is merely a faux pas by Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump is seized upon as a major crisis and scandal if the perpetrator is Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden (along with Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton). This cannot continue to stand, not without some blowback.
We shouldn’t be here, but this is the world we are in. Democrats and liberals must integrate critiques of the press in their dialogue. It isn’t only Republicans and the right that they must contend with, but also the press that serves as the observers for the public at large. They have shown themselves to be supremely unreliable narrators and the consequences are too severe to just allow them to run rampant over our democracy.
Biden’s exchange is hopefully not just a temporary flash in the pan, but instead should be a pivot point. The media isn’t the enemy of the people, but they have not worked as the public’s ally or advocates either. They aren’t going to get any better so they will require fair, but firm and forceful, correction. So long as they choose to align themselves with the interests of one side over the needs of the shared public good, they have made this bed for themselves and let the chips fall where they may. (snip-a bit More)
It’s that simple.
JUL 15, 2024
Last week, at his NATO Summit press conference, President Biden, in the midst of consistently demonstrating a widely-praised command of foreign policy issues, went on a small diatribe about gun violence, which included this memorable phrase:
“Control guns, not girls”
It was immediately resonant, drawing acclaim from many quarters. It’s the kind of simple yet powerful slogan that can propel a campaign into history. I was so taken with it that I launched a t-shirt campaign the following day; we’ve already sold more than 300. (Purchase yours here: https://www.bonfire.com/controlgunsnotgirls/)
Full video of the President’s remarks are below (the gun reform portion starts at 2:20):
The President has a history of making prescient remarks; anyone remember the USA Today op-ed he wrote on the threat of COVID in early 2020, just six weeks before the shutdown?
Two days after this presser, a 20 year-old gunman used an AR-15-style rifle purchased by his father to fire eight rounds at Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One round went through the upper part of Trump’s right ear, while other shots critically wounded two audience members behind him and killed a third: 50 year-old Corey Comperatore, who was shielding his two daughters from the gunfire.
I want to quickly point out that I can’t imagine being the family of Mr. Comperatore and hearing elected officials like Sen. Marco Rubio claim that God saved Donald Trump, the implication being that those wounded and killed in senseless acts of gun violence were forgotten by God.
That’s not faith. That’s warping and exploiting the love of God for cultish ends.
This horrific tragedy should never have happened. No civilian should be able to purchase an AR-15-style rifle, a weapon of war, but moreover, if we treated firearms with respect in this country, there would be comprehensive safety, licensing, and registration regulations similar to those we have for cars.
In the aftermath, every major Democratic leader in the country immediately condemned this act of cowardice. The President—in addition to delivering an immediate on-camera statement—called Trump to offer support, assembled federal resources to investigate the tragedy, and gave a moving national address from the Oval Office demanding a wholesale rejection of political violence.
Meanwhile, a number of Republican elected officials and pundits chose to politicize the tragedy while the victims were still being helped. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio—Trump’s likely running mate—immediately blamed the assassination attempt on President Biden. Congressman Mike Collins (GA-10) histrionically claimed that Pres. Biden “sent the orders” for Trump to be assassinated.
I find this fascinating given that the only incendiary rhetoric literally calling for political violence has been from the Republican Party, particularly in the past few months.
Like Kevin D. Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind the unabashedly fascist Project 2025, who said, two weeks ago, that the country “is in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
“Bloodless.”
That same week, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor who’s been endorsed by Trump, told a church congregation that “some folks need killing” and that “Some liberal somewhere is gonna say that sounds awful. Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing. It’s time for someday to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity.”
Or how about last year when numerous Republican Members of Congress started wearing AR-15 pins on their suits while at the Capitol, handed out by Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who owns a stake in the company that sells them.
The AR-15 and its variants are responsible for most of the mass shootings that have become some of the most tragic markers on the American psyche in recent memory: Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Route 91 Harvest Festival, among others, and, of course, this past weekend’s assassination attempt on Trump and the murder of Mr. Comperatore.
There is only one major political party using and condoning and enabling violent rhetoric. Just one. It’s the Republican Party.
Don’t let any political journalist or outlet opine about politicization while they fail to hold accountable the GOP’s horrific rhetoric. Don’t let them shame you into ignoring this appalling double standard.
Control guns, not girls.
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