Tonight, Rachel Maddow started her show with a story I had not heard about: Blatant corruption in Arizona, where the now Secretary of the Interior reversed a decision to bar an environmentally destructive development in Benson AZ, shortly after the developer, a major Trump contributor, met with him. And this Secretary of the Interior, Bernhardt, replaced the blatantly corrupt Ryan Zinke. Congress is now investigating.
Rachel skipped her usual intro about what a huge news day it was and went right to the story. Those of us expecting to see coverage of the Trump racism rally chant story had to wait until later in the show, and much shorter coverage than everywhere else.
After the story, she made her point:*
“Why do we have to follow the bouncing ball and do and think and focus and feel only on subjects of the President’s choosing. His method is to stoke outrage. He thinks it’s good for him.
Now more than ever we have to watch what they do, not what they say.
Do not play requests.”
The whole segment is definitely worth watching.
She’s right. While the big fox is braying racism and hatred and attracting all the attention, the little foxes are ravaging the hen house, often without notice even by obsessive news junkies like me.
Rachel again: “We’re going to look back one day and be astonished at what they were doing. We will all want to answer about what we were doing and whether we were paying attention.”
*Approximate transcription.