Covering Trump vs. Biden

Yesterday, President Biden delivered a speech in Pennsylvania contrasting his Scranton policies to help the poor and middle class with Trump’s Mar-a-Lago policies to enrich the rich and super-rich.

But this might come as news to you. That’s because cable news networks were too busy covering Trump’s criminal trial in New York City. 

New York DA Alvin Bragg is prosecuting him for falsifying business records. He alleges that Trump did so to cover up his affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump allegedly feared news of it would torpedo his 2016 presidential campaign.  

However, currently, reporters are merely airing idle speculation about potential jurors. Worse, they are leaking sufficient biographical details to enable MAGA zealots to dox and intimidate these individuals. All this while they’re making patently disingenuous disclaimers about the need to protect the identity of the jurors. 

But we all know why they’re covering this trial like flies hovering over shit. It’s because Trump’s brazen and narcissistic lies generate far better ratings than Biden’s normal and altruistic truths. And Trump is nothing if not reliable in this respect.

Former President Donald Trump began his day as a criminal defendant lashing out at the judge and prosecutors, casting himself as a victim and angrily posting on social media. In other words: a familiar routine. 

(The Associated Press, April 16, 2024)

Media helping Trump play us for fools

Trump is like the Shakespearean fool who, despite his buffoonery, often blurts out damning truths. Case in point, when a reporter at a campaign stop asked if he thought he could get a fair jury, Trump quipped:

I’ll let you know after the trial if the jury was fair.

(CNN, April 17, 2024)

Therein lies the rub: Trump, like the Shakespearean fool, is no fool at all. You need only think about the impact of Trump’s norm-busting behavior on every facet of American life. Because the joke has always been on us. 

Media Trump obsession knows no bounds

Trump’s congenital narcissism has him propagating the big lie that he can get a fair trial only if:

1. the presiding judge is one he appointed, and
2. the jury consists of MAGA supporters who think he’s the second coming of Jesus Christ. 

That reflects his autocratic fetish at its worst. Yet the media have no compunction about covering such dystopian rants. Only that explains reporters staking out the courthouse to cover his “familiar routine” before and after each day’s proceedings. 

They couldn’t care less that their obsessive coverage is helping Trump undermine the criminal justice system. A system, mind you, that is treating him better than any other criminal defendant in US history. 

Indeed, he’s benefiting from systemic bias that has always favored White men like him. But you’d be hard-pressed to find any network pointing this out. 

Trump … brought his campaign to the courthouse, delivering statements before and after the day’s proceedings, which he again cast as nothing more than a politically motivated effort by his rivals to hinder his campaign.

‘This is political persecution,’ he steamed after arriving with a phalanx of lawyers and several senior aides, but without his wife or other family members. ‘This is an assault on our country,’ he went on.

(The Associated Press, April 16, 2024)

That is what the media are propagating every day, often twice a day. But this is what passes for journalism nowadays: Reporters chasing after outrageous sound bites like Pavlovian dogs chasing after bones. And Trump and his Republican demon spawns have become master trollers in this context. 

Nevertheless, the least reporters can do in this case is interrupt Trump’s Groundhog Day rant by shouting probing questions at him. You know, questions about his porn sex, political lies, and pussy audiotape, which gave rise to this criminal trial.