Donald Trump is making no secret of the fact that he views his daily reality TV pressers as nothing more than political theater, recently bragging about how wonderful his ratings are. In addition, no one with a shred of honesty can claim that he has been consistent or correct about much of anything, or show that he isn’t doing more harm than good.
While I don’t watch TV anymore, I am told by people who do that these pressers are an hour long and fill the timeslot that prime time news programs once occupied, effectively replacing nightly news relied upon by millions of people with Donald Trump’s unhinged lies and attacks against his political enemies. Is it any wonder that despite failing every step of the way in grandiose fashion, failures that will literally kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, his ratings have mysteriously gone up, not down?
It is blatant interference in the political process for TV executives to put lucrative ratings ahead of their responsibility to the public to serve as an unbiased conduit for news that people need to make rational decisions in a democratic system of government.
Unless we want a repeat in 2020 of the exact same fawning by the press over the traveling Trump Circus that occurred in 2016, to the tune of several BILLION dollars, and a repeat of the tragic outcome that undoubtedly gave us, then Democratic leaders must demand equal time — loudly and persistently, in a national advocacy effort, until either the networks refuse to grant unlimited time to the illiterate baboon or they provide us equal time in prime time to give the American people the information they need to protect themselves, both now in terms of the covid crisis and later at the ballot box.
The status quo is unacceptable. If Trump is allowed to continue lying to the American people without pushback then we will lose and America will be screwed again by the corporate media, who clearly have come down on the side of Trump — again — and will happily put the toxic Carnival Barker back in the WH in exchange for ratings going through the roof. It is our responsibility to ensure that they are not allowed to do that. What are we waiting for, November?