Tag: hillary clinton
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

Media Underscored Clinton's 'Deplorables' -- But Shrug Off Trump's 'Vermin'

Major news outlets devoted dramatically less coverage to former President Donald Trump describing his political enemies as “vermin” earlier this month than they provided then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” remark in the week following those respective comments.

According to a Media Matters review:
  • The Big Three broadcast TV networks provided 18 times more coverage of Clinton’s 2016 “deplorables” comment than Trump’s “vermin” remark on their combined nationally syndicated morning news, evening news, and Sunday morning political talk shows.
  • CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC mentioned Clinton’s “deplorables” comment nearly 9 times more than Trump’s “vermin” comment.
  • Print reports that mentioned Clinton's statement outnumbered those that mentioned Trump’s 29-to-1 across the five highest-circulating U.S. newspapers.

Coverage decisions like these provide insight into which stories the editors, producers, and reporters at major news outlets are prioritizing and shape the political landscape during presidential election cycles.

Experts on authoritarianism warned that Trump’s rhetoric echoed that of fascist dictators like Adolf Hitler after he promised to “root out the communist, Marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country” in a November 11 speech. The former president, who frequently describes his political opponents, including President Joe Biden’s administration, as “communists,” added that those forces want “to destroy America and to destroy the American dream” and that “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within.”

By contrast, the right weaponized Clinton’s relatively mundane “basket of deplorables” comment. Clinton told attendees at a September 2016 fundraiser that while “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables” who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic,” a statement consistent with contemporaneous polling. But she went on to stress that attendees shouldn’t write off all of his backers because they also include “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change,” adding, “Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”

The right-wing grievance machine seized on Clinton’s comments, with Trump, his political allies, and his media propagandists whipping up a pseudo scandal by claiming that Clinton had attacked all Trump supporters and feigning offense (they’ve repeatedly attempted to run the same playbook and manufacture a “deplorable moment” for Biden). Unfortunately, major national news outlets responded by rewarding the right for its disingenuous act, showering Clinton’s “deplorables” remark with coverage.

By contrast, the same outlets largely ignored Trump’s description of his political enemies as “vermin,” continuing a pattern of relatively muted coverage of Trump’s abhorrent and incoherent commentary. When experts are sounding the alarm about the similarities between a likely U.S. presidential nominee’s rhetoric and that of genocidaires, it warrants much more significant attention from journalists at leading news outlets.

Broadcast news coverage of “deplorables” versus “vermin”

Media Matters reviewed the nationally syndicated broadcast news shows – ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ This Morning, Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press – in the first week after each remark.

We found that those programs aired 54 minutes of coverage of Clinton's “deplorables” comment but just 3 minutes regarding Trump's “vermin” remark.

ABC News aired 20 minutes of “deplorables” coverage across 13 segments and 3 teasers, but devoted only a single minute of coverage to the “vermin” comment, during an interview with the network’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, about his new book.

CBS News provided 13 minutes of “deplorables” coverage across 11 segments and 3 teasers, compared to 1 passing mention of the “vermin” remark on Face the Nation that comprised less than 30 seconds.And NBC News spent 21 minutes of airtime on the “deplorables” comment across 11 segments, compared to 2 minutes on “vermin” — one a passing mention, the other an interview in which Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker read the comment to Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and asked her, “Are you comfortable with this language coming from the GOP front-runner?” (McDaniel declined to comment.)

Cable news coverage of “deplorables” versus “vermin”

Media Matters reviewed mentions of “deplorable” or “deplorables” and of “vermin” on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, in the week following each comment.

We found 1,662 “deplorable” mentions compared to 191 mentions of “vermin” across the three cable networks.
On CNN, there were 553 mentions of “deplorable” compared to 70 for “vermin.”

On Fox News, there were 513 mentions of “deplorable” compared to only 9 of “vermin.”

And on MSNBC, there were 596 mentions of “deplorable” compared to only 112 of “vermin.”

Print news coverage of “deplorables” versus “vermin”

Media Matters reviewed print news coverage in the top 5 U.S. newspapers by circulation — the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post — in the first week following each remark. We counted both stories that mentioned the comments and those we determined were primarily about those remarks because discussion of them appeared in the story’s headline and/or lead.

We found that the papers ran a total of 29 news articles mentioning Clinton’s “deplorables” remark — 13 of which ran on the front page. Of those, 11 of the articles, including 3 of the front-page articles, mentioned the remark in its headline and/or lead. By contrast, the papers combined for just 1 print news article that mentioned Trump’s “vermin” comment, which ran in the interior of The Washington Post.

The Los Angeles Times ran 3 print news articles mentioning Clinton’s “deplorables” comment, 2 of which ran on its front page. Of the 3, 1 article mentioned the comment in its lead; it ran on the paper’s front page. The paper did not mention Trump’s “vermin” remark in a print news story.

The New York Times ran 7 print news articles mentioning Clinton’s “deplorables” remark, 4 of which ran on its front page. Of the 7, 2 mentioned the remark in its headline or lead. The paper did not mention Trump’s “vermin” remark in a print news story.

The Wall Street Journal ran 8 print news articles mentioning Clinton’s “deplorables” remark, 4 of which ran on its front page. Of the 8, 3 mentioned the remark in their headline or lead, and 1 of those ran on the Journal's front page. The paper did not mention Trump’s “vermin” remark in a print news story.

The Washington Post ran 9 print news articles mentioning Clinton’s “deplorables” remark, 3 of which ran on its front page. Of the 9, 5 mentioned the remark in its headline or lead, and 1 of those ran on the paper’s front page. The Post’s only report mentioning Trump’s “vermin” remark ran on A2 under the headline “Echoing Hitler, Mussolini, Trump calls political foes 'vermin.'”

USA Today ran 2 print news articles that mentioned the “deplorables” remark and none that mentioned the “vermin” comment.

Correction (11/28/23): This piece originally included an incorrect date in the graphs and in the methodology. Additionally one of the bullets in the introduction mischaracterized the print coverage.

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, Evening 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 “Mussolini,” “Hitler,” “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 November 17, 2023, one week after the initial comment.

We searched transcripts in the Kinetiq video database for all original episodes of ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ This Morning, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press for any of the terms “Hillary,” “Clinton,” or “former secretary of state” within close proximity of any of the terms “deplorable,” “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” “xenophobic,” “Islamophobic,” or “Trump supporter” from September 9, 2016, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables” at a campaign fundraising event, through September 15, 2016, one week after the initial comment.

We timed broadcast 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, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables” at a campaign fundraising event was the stated topic of discussion, or when we found significant discussion of either of those comments. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed either of the comments with one another.
We also timed broadcast mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned Trump's or Clinton's remarks without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and broadcast teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about Trump's or Clinton's comments scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.

We also searched transcripts in the Kinetiq video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC for the term “vermin” from November 11, 2023, through November 17, 2023, and either of the terms “deplorable” or “deplorables” from September 9, 2016, through September 15, 2016. We considered any instance of any of the terms a single mention.

Finally, we searched print articles in the Factiva and Nexis databases 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 roughly the same paragraph (approximately 200 words) as “Mussolini,” “Hitler,” “vermin,” “root out,” “radical left,” “thug,” “communist,” “Marxist,” “fascist,” “threat,” or “destroy” from November 11, 2023, through November 17, 2023.

We also searched print articles from the same newspapers for any of the terms “Hillary,” “Clinton,” or “former secretary of state” within roughly the same paragraph (approximately 200 words) as “deplorable,” “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” “xenophobic,” “Islamophobic,” or “Trump supporter” from September 9, 2016, through September 15, 2016.

We considered a print article to be about either of the comments if they were mentioned in the headline or lead paragraphs. We included all news articles in the A section of the paper. We did not include editorials, op-eds, or letters to the editor.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Pro-Trump Influencer Gets Seven Months In Election Tampering Scheme

Pro-Trump Influencer Gets Seven Months In Election Tampering Scheme

Pro-Trump influencer Douglass Mackey is now headed to federal prison to serve a seven-month sentence after being convicted by a federal jury in March. Prosecutors asked for Mackey, who was arrested in 2021, to serve between six months and a year behind bars.

Mackey, a West Palm Beach, Florida resident who went by the name "Ricky Vaughn," was found guilty on one count of conspiracy against rights for trying to defraud Hillary Clinton supporters in the 2016 election. According to the New York Times, Judge Ann M. Donnelly, of the Eastern District of New York, said while sentencing Mackey that he was "one of the leading members" of the conspiracy to prevent Clinton supporters from voting, adding that it was "nothing short of an assault on our democracy."

The conspiracy in question stemmed from a series of posts, meant to look like they were from the former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, encouraging Black and Latino supporters to vote by text message or through social media, knowing that those votes would not actually be counted. One of those posts showed a Black woman holding a sign, and another post was in Spanish, and included the Clinton campaign logo with fine print attached that read "Hillary for President."

At the time of the conspiracy, Mackey's "Ricky Vaughn" Twitter account had approximately 58,000 followers, and was labeled by the M.I.T. Media Lab in February of 2016 as the 107th most powerful influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election. While Mackey's attorney argued during the trial that his client's actions accounted to just a few clicks on a computer, prosecutors countered that Mackey's "true power was his ability to spread messages to convert his clicks into tens of thousands more."

Notably, former President Donald Trump is also facing the same charge of of conspiracy against rights that Mackey was just sentenced under. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump on that charge, among several others, in his August indictment pertaining to Trump's role in the January 6 insurrection. Trump is scheduled to stand trial on those charges on March 4, 2024, just before the pivotal Super Tuesday primaries.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump In 2016: Electing Indicted President Would Create Crippling 'Crisis'

Trump In 2016: Electing Indicted President Would Create Crippling 'Crisis'

Former President Donald Trump hopes to reclaim the White House in 2024 while facing dozens of criminal indictments. But shortly before the 2016 presidential election, Trump declared that candidates under those circumstances should be disqualified from serving as commander-in-chief.

On Monday, CNN's KFile dug up several instances in which Trump insisted that then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should be barred from seeking the presidency due to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's contemporaneous probe into her controversial use of a personal email server during her tenure as United States secretary of state.

For example, Trump proclaimed at a November 3rd, 2016 event in Concord, North Carolina that if Clinton "were to win, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government."

Clinton, Trump continued, "is likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up – in my opinion – in a criminal trial. I mean, you take a look. Who knows? But it certainly looks that way."

Two days later at a November 5th, 2016 rally in Reno, Nevada, Trump said that "we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial" and that "It would grind government to a halt."

Several hours later in Denver, Colorado, Trump called Clinton — whom the FBI eventually exonerated — "the prime suspect in a far-reaching criminal investigation" which would make it "virtually impossible for her to govern."

CNN noted that "Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, will not be disqualified from the presidency even if convicted, and he told Politico in June that he won't leave the presidential race if he is convicted of the charges."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Donald Trump

Trump's Captive Media Demands Politicized Justice

Donald Trump conceives of justice as what happens when the law punishes his enemies and protects himself and his allies, and he has spent the last eight years urging his supporters to view investigations through that lens. The former president frequently denounces his critics as criminals, calls for their prosecutions, and claims that he and his cronies have done nothing wrong. When the justice system disagrees, he assails it as corrupt.

The pro-Trump media response to his Tuesday arraignment on federal criminal charges shows how thoroughly this narrative has infested their thinking. Right-wing pundits have excoriated the decision to prosecute Trump over mishandling government documents as politically motivated, and pointed to the lack of prosecutions for Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden as evidence of a two-tiered justice system. And they’ve adopted Trump’s own view that the Justice Department should serve the will of the president by attributing to Joe Biden, without evidence, the special counsel’s decision to file charges against his predecessor.

It is true that federal investigations involving Trump and his cronies have repeatedly led to prosecutions, while probes of Clinton and Hunter Biden have dragged on or fizzled without charges. But what Trump’s propagandists ignore is that all of these investigations have involved oversight from one or more high-ranking Republicans — at times including those appointed by Trump; in several, key decisions were made while Trump was in office; and Democratic political appointees involved in the cases repeatedly acted to reduce any appearance of coercion.

Under the cover of critiquing the process of these investigations, the real complaint from Trump’s media allies is squarely over their results. In their view, by definition, if probes lead to charges against Trump but not his opponents, they must be unjust.

Fox anchor Martha MacCallum provided a case study in this motivated reasoning during a fiery back-and-forth with contributor Juan Williams shortly after Trump pleaded not guilty on Tuesday. She rejected Williams’ effort to distinguish between the Trump documents probe, which resulted in an indictment, and the probe of Clinton’s use of a private server, which did not. And then she suggested that Americans are right to think that only political partisanship explains such decisions.

“You seem to be able to just say, ‘Oh, everybody did what they were supposed to do there,’ but the problem is that half the country sees investigations as either politically sunk or politically elevated depending on the winds that happen to be backing them,” MacCallum said. “So you might have confidence that those cases were investigated clearly. A lot of Americans don't have that confidence. They see, my goodness, so how could it take five years to investigate Hunter Biden's taxes and what's on a laptop? Can you explain that to me? What is taking five years, Juan, if it isn't back-burnered?”

Such sentiments are everywhere on the right. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro went so far as to call for a completely unworkable system in which the Justice Department explicitly and deliberately only prosecutes members of the president’s party, saying, “The only way that you actually restore the credibility of the justice system is to have Republicans prosecute Republicans and Democrats prosecute Democrats."

A Fox chyron that night referring to Joe Biden read, “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested” — dangerously inflammatory language which suggests that Trump’s prosecution can only be explained as the president’s doing.

But the federal investigations of Trump, Clinton, and Hunter Biden actually show something very different from the right’s overwrought claims that Democrats are prosecuting Republicans while letting Democrats off the hook. In fact, those cases show that when Republicans and Trump appointees investigate Republicans the probes have led to criminal charges, and when Republicans and Trump appointees investigate Democrats they have not. And when Democrats held the presidency during such investigations, the party’s leaders and political appointees bent over backward to avoid impropriety.

Trump documents probe: Launched under Republican FBI director appointed by Trump, prosecuted by independent special counsel. The FBI opened its investigation of Trump’s handling of government documents in March 2022 under the leadership of Director Christopher Wray, a Republican appointed to that post by Trump who had previously served as a political appointee in the Justice Department during the presidency of George W. Bush. After Trump declared his candidacy for president, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, a political independent who had prosecuted politicians of both parties as head of the Justice Department’s political corruption unit, to oversee the case as special counsel, walling it off from political pressure. President Biden reportedly found out Smith had filed charges through news reports and has ordered the Democratic National Committee and his reelection campaign not to mention Trump’s prosecution.

Hunter Biden probe: Launched under Trump-appointed Republicans, currently overseen by a Trump-appointed Republican. MacCallum complained that the federal probe of Hunter Biden’s business dealings has gone five years without reaching a conclusion and suggested partisanship explains the delay — but the bulk of that time was during the Trump administration. The probe launched in 2018, when the FBI was headed by Wray and the Justice Department by the Trump-appointed Republican Jeff Sessions, and continued through the tenure of the Trump-appointed Republican Attorney General William Barr. After Joe Biden’s election, he retained David Weiss, the Republican prosecutor overseeing the probe, as U.S. attorney in Delaware rather than replacing him as he did most of Trump’s appointees.

Clinton email server probe: Launched and closed without charges under Republican FBI director. The FBI, headed at the time by Director James Comey, a Republican, opened an investigation in 2015 into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. After Loretta Lynch, the Obama-appointed attorney general, publicly said she would accept the FBI’s recommendations as to whether to prosecute the case, Comey recommended no charges, saying, “Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” That judgment was apparently ratified by the Trump-appointed FBI and Justice Department leadership, which did not reopen the case and charge Clinton.

Clinton Foundation probe: Launched under Republican FBI director, closed without charges at end of Trump administration. Under Comey and fellow Republican Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the FBI opened an investigation in 2016 into the Clinton Foundation’s dealings with foreign donors during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The probe continued through the Trump administration under his political appointees at the FBI and Justice Department, “long past when F.B.I. agents and prosecutors knew it was a dead end,” and was ultimately closed without charges in the final days of his administration.

Clinton Uranium One probe: Trump-appointed Republican AG assigned case to Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who investigated and closed the case without charges. Sessions selected John Huber, a U.S. attorney appointed by Trump, to investigate Clinton’s purportedly criminal role in the U.S. government's decision not to block the sale of the company known as Uranium One. After a two-year probe, Huber concluded his work without recommending any criminal charges.

Trump Russia probe: Launched under Republican FBI director, prosecuted by Republican special counsel selected by Republican Trump appointee. The Comey/McCabe FBI opened the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the efforts by Trump associates to aid that interference. After Trump fired Comey, citing his handling of the probe, Rod Rosenstein, the Trump-appointed Republican serving as deputy attorney general, appointed Robert Mueller as a special counsel overseeing the case. Mueller, a Republican, had served as a political appointee in the Justice Department of President George H.W. Bush and was appointed FBI director by President George W. Bush. Mueller successfully prosecuted several top Trump aides and developed substantial evidence of obstruction by Trump.

The throughline of these cases is that federal prosecutors — even Republican ones — don’t find either the right-wing media’s conspiracy theories about Democratic criminality or their furious declarations of Republican innocence to be legally compelling arguments.

When the results of those probes don’t match Trump’s expectations, he denounces Republicans like Comey, McCabe, Wray, and Mueller — and Fox and the rest of the right-wing press follows his lead.

And so Republicans end up declaring that the FBI, long a conservative bastion, needs to be shut down because the results of its investigations don’t match the political expectations of Trump and his propagandists.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.