Tag: 2016 presidential election
Donald Trump

Why Did National News Outlets Downplay Trump's Nazi-Style Rhetoric?

Former President Donald Trump repeatedly pledged to “root out” his political opponents, who he claimed “live like vermin within the confines of our country” and want to “destroy America.” Experts on authoritarianism are comparing the unhinged rhetoric to that of genocidal fascist dictators — but that has not compelled significant coverage from several major newspapers and broadcast networks.

“Today especially, in honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communist, Marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally — to destroy America and to destroy the American dream,” Trump said at a rally on Saturday.

“The real threat is not from the radical right; the real threat is from the radical left, and it’s growing every day, every single day,” he added. “The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within.”

The former president and runaway leader for the Republican presidential nomination reiterated the point on his Truth Social platform.

But if you rely on the news divisions of the Big Three broadcast networks, you haven’t seen the chilling footage of Trump’s remarks. CBS News and ABC News have not mentioned Trump’s remarks at all on their morning news, evening news, or Sunday morning political talk shows.

NBC News also did not discuss them on its morning and evening news broadcasts, and Meet The Presssole coverage consisted of host Kristen Welker reading the comment to Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and asking her, “Are you comfortable with this language coming from the GOP front-runner?” (McDaniel declined to comment).

The nation’s most-read newspapers are similarly not treating these remarks as a major story. The Los Angeles Times, TheNew York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal have not covered the former president’s comments in the news sections of their print editions. (The New York Times did cover it online, but its report on the remarks drew criticism for its initial headline, “Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction.”) The Washington Post did publish a print article, but kept it off the front page.

The editors, producers, and reporters at major national news outlets signal the relative importance of various stories through the volume and prominence of the attention they give them. During the 2016 presidential election, for example, those notables treated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s email travails as the single most important story of the cycle. President Joe Biden’s age has likewise been a fixation for news outlets this year, even though Trump is only a few years younger.

But Trump’s extremist outbursts often draw little or no coverage from major news outlets. That is remarkable, particularly given how genuinely unhinged his remarks often are, and given that right-wing institutions are laying the groundwork for a future Trump administration to carry out top priorities like arresting his political enemies.

His “vermin” comments are a classic case of a newsworthy statement that has somehow escaped such treatment. Experts on authoritarianism compared Trump’s remarks to the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

“When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human,” Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, told the Post. “That’s what dictators do.”

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, told the Post that people making such comparisons are “suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

That story, the only one to appear in a print edition from the outlets we reviewed, did not make the paper’s front page. As of Monday morning, Post editors had placed its online version far down on their website and app.

Methodology

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original episodes of ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evenings News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press for either of the terms “Trump” or “former president” within close proximity of any of the terms “vermin,” “root out,” “radical left,” “thug,” “communist,” “Marxist,” “fascist,” “threat,” or “destroy” from November 11, 2023, when Trump made the comments during a Veterans Day address in Claremont, New Hampshire, through 12 p.m. November 13, 2023.

We also searched print articles from the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today,The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post for either of the terms “Trump” or “former president” within the same headline or lead paragraphs as “vermin,” “root out,” “radical left,” “thug,” “communist,” “Marxist,” “fascist,” “threat,” or “destroy” from November 11, 2023, through 12 p.m. November 13, 2023.

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when Trump's 2023 Veterans Day speech in which he likened his political opponents to “vermin” was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of those comments from the address. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the comments with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned Trump's remarks without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about Trump's comments scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.

Finally, we included print news articles, which we defined as instances when Trump's comments were mentioned in the headline or lead paragraphs in the A section of the paper. We did not include editorial, op-eds, or letters to the editor.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

GOP 'Whataboutism' Won't Save Trump If He Faces Federal Indictment

GOP 'Whataboutism' Won't Save Trump If He Faces Federal Indictment

Temporarily anyway, Donald J. Trump resembles the Br’er Rabbit of the Joel Chandler Harris tales, flung into the briar patch by the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago country club. Not only has the former president gotten to star in his favorite role as heroic martyr by loudly denouncing the Justice Department’s seizure of stolen documents, but he's reduced his Republican rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination to bit players.

Meanwhile, the grift goes on. Yesterday, I received two solicitations, one for “Official Donald J. Trump Fine Point Markers” just like those the great man used in the White House. Only $18. The second offered an “Official 2022 ULTRA MAGA MEMBER” decal for $45. I haven’t been so excited since receiving my very own glow-in-the-dark Flash Gordon magic decoder ring when I was eight.

MAGA cultists, of course, will buy anything. Trump’s reported to be pulling in a cool million bucks a day on this junk, not to mention the cash pouring into his legal defense fund. That’s the main reason he keeps hinting at declaring his candidacy but never crossing the line. Because the minute he does, campaign finance laws prevent him putting the cash in his pocket.

The estimable blogger Digby Parton thinks this is good news for the Biden administration. “Trump is the gift that keeps on giving—for Democrats” she writes. “[T}he drumbeat of Trump, Trump, Trump, has turned the midterm election from a standard referendum on the president to a choice between the undisputed leader of the Republican Party and the leader of the Democratic Party. And while it’s true that Biden’s popularity numbers are low, Trump’s are even worse.”

Exactly what the former president had in mind hoarding Top Secret documents is impossible to say. According to the New York Times, boxes seized during the Mar-a-Lago search “related to some of the most highly classified programs run by the United States.” The Washington Post describes papers “relating to nuclear weapons,” while the Wall Street Journal reported that “information about the ‘President of France” was listed on the FBI’s three-page receipt of items confiscated at Trump’s country club hide-away.

“Sacre bleu!”

But unless you believe Trump’s mutually contradictory alibis—the FBI planted the evidence, the president declassified it with his own magic decoder ring, Hillary Clinton got away with much worse, etc.—the Big Man would appear to have some explaining to do.

For Trump’s sake, it had better not take place in a federal courtroom, given the poor quality of lawyers he’s hired. (That’s what happens when you get a reputation as a deadbeat client.) Anyway, the time to petition for a Special Master to monitor the DOJ’s examination of the evidence was two weeks ago. It's just a stalling tactic now.

As for Trump’s magnanimous offer to help Attorney General Merrick Garland calm public anger after two weeks of yelling about the government’s “Gestapo” tactics, that’s particularly rich.

You do know, don’t you, that Kenneth Starr had the White House living quarters searched for Rose Law Firm billing records? Including Hillary and Chelsea’s underwear drawers. Also, when the records eventually turned up where an aide had misplaced them, they showed exactly what Hillary said they would.

As for the 30,000 “missing” emails Trump urged the Russians to find (knowing perfectly well, thanks to Wikileaks, that the Kremlin had already stolen them), they turned out to contain, according to FBI director James Comey, exactly eight containing “Top Secret” information.

Seven talked about CIA drone strikes that had already been in the newspapers. The eighth was about the secretary of state’s conversation with the president of Malawi.

And that’s why even the grandstanding Comey couldn’t find anything to charge her with.

Under what I used to call the “Clinton Rules,” however, reporters would skip over Hillary’s exoneration, scold her for acting suspicious, and move on to the next accusation.

Meanwhile, even ostensibly respectable Republicans are employing classic “whataboutism” to rewrite history in Trump’s favor. Writing in the New York Times,National Review editor Rich Lowry asks what if George W. Bush’s Justice Department had ordered Al Gore’s office searched? Would Democrats have said “Let’s wait, and see?”

Who knows? It never happened.

More tellingly, Lowry parrots Trump’s characterization of the “Russia investigation” as a “national fiasco that brought discredit on the F.B.I. and everyone who participated in it. The probe prominently featured a transparently ridiculous dossier generated by the Clinton campaign.”

This is simply false. Robert Mueller’s probe documented more than 70 meetings between Trump staffers and Kremlin operatives, including, let us recall, a sit down in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

It had almost nothing to do with the infamous “dodgy dossier.”

Trump hasn’t been charged with any crimes. But if that happens, it will be in a real courtroom, with real evidence.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin

Indicted Russian Tech Mogul May Know Secrets Of Kremlin Election Meddling

In December 18, Russian tech millionaire Vladislav Klyushin was extradited from Switzerland to the United States — where he is facing insider trading charges. And according to Bloomberg News reporters Henry Meyer, Irina Reznik and Hugo Miller, U.S. authorities consider Klyushin a “Kremlin insider” who “works with the Russian government’s top echelons” and may have valuable information on Russian interference in the United States’ 2016 presidential election.

“Just 18 months earlier,” the Bloomberg reporters explain, “Klyushin received a medal of honor from Russian President Vladimir Putin…. Klyushin’s cybersecurity work and Kremlin ties could make him a useful source of information for U.S. officials, according to several people familiar with Russian intelligence matters. Most critically, these people said, if he chooses to cooperate, he could provide Americans with their closest view yet of 2016 election manipulation.”

Meyer, Reznik and Miller report that according to sources, Klyushin’s “transfer to the U.S. represents a serious intelligence blow to the Kremlin” that “would deepen if Klyushin decides to seek leniency from U.S. prosecutors by providing information about Moscow’s inner workings.” The Bloomberg reporters note that although Switzerland granted the United States’ extradition request for Klyushin, it denied one from the Russian government.

“Indications of Klyushin’s vantage point are peppered throughout U.S. filings,” Meyer, Reznik and Miller report. “His IT firm, M-13, worked for the Russian presidency, government and ministries, according to his insider trading indictment. Among his subordinates was a former military intelligence official named Ivan Yermakov, who is charged alongside Klyushin in the indictment. Yermakov is also a defendant in a 2018 indictment from U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team that accuses him and 11 other Russians of hacking into Democrats’ computers systems.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Danziger: The Most Useful Idiot

Danziger: The Most Useful Idiot

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.