Are they going to do it again?
The mainstream media helped elect Trump by being participants in Republican smears of Clinton. We know how this worked: Republicans held “investigations” into situations where they knew there was no scandal just so they could manipulate the mainstream media into producing headlines that said, “Committee members say this or that about Clinton Scandal” or “More Details Revealed About Clinton Scandal.” The repetition of those kinds of headlines is directly related to Clinton starting out the election campaign with a fifty percent disapproval rating, even though there was no substance to any of the “scandals.” There were two real scandals: the abuse of the Congressional investigation process for partisan goals by the Republicans and the complicity of the media—the media that claims to be the legitimate news—in perpetuating Republican propaganda.
So today I saw this headline on my AOL account: Delaware Beer Donor: I Wore a Wire to Investigate Biden’s Fundraising. https://news.yahoo.com/delaware-beer-distributor-wore-wire-083040968.html
Oh, oh! Corruption in the Biden campaign! Except the story is ten years old, those people in the Delaware power structure who were affiliated with Biden recused themselves, Biden was never connected to the wrong-doing, and the behavior which was a crime at that time is no longer illegal. In other words, the story is that the system of justice worked. But to find that out, the reader would have to make inferences that run counter to the tone and purpose of the article. The rest of the article is about the supposed institutionalized corruption of relationship-driven politics. The reporter has the nerve to claim that a light needs to be shown on this.
Guess what, asshole. There is nothing wrong with people in politics knowing each other and talking to each other. In fact, the decision-making process of every place everywhere is based on people knowing each other and talking to each other. The corruption of our politics is based on the influence of money, or on favoritism, not the influence of people knowing each other and speaking civilly to each other.
And if Politico and the reporter were interested in throwing a light on pay for play and cronyism in politics, how about investigating why Moscow Mitch is refusing to even allow the Democratic anti-lobbying bill (which Biden supports) to be discussed on the floor of the Senate? Why not look at Trump’s donors and the connection to his deregulation executive orders? What about Trump actually shilling for his donor Goya from the Oval Office? What about Trump spending donor money on himself? Selling access to himself through events at Maralago? What about the connections between the Republican party’s climate change denialism and oil money? In all of the Politico article about supposed pay for play in Delaware, the only time of Citizens United, a Republican initiative that has flooded our politics with dark money, is mentioned is to show that the crimes of ten years ago are now legal. But the reporter makes little of the fact that the criminal behavior that is the backbone of the story is now legal because of Republicans!
So Politico and writer Ben Schreckinger are smearing Biden with the broad brush of pay for play crony politics—without any evidence of a crime then or now. The article creates a nice handy meme for the right wing to repeat: Biden cronyism pay for play! The timing is beneficial for Republicans who are embarking on “investigations” in order to generate “Biden Investigated/Scandal” headlines. Here we fucking go again.
The Lincoln Project has a powerful video about Republican politicians who have been complicit in Trump’s crimes that ends with the mantra, “Remember their names and never trust them again.”
I think that applies here. The names are Ben Schreckinger and Politico. Remember their names and never fucking trust again. And let them know: http://www.benschreckinger.com/contactben