In the midst of the horrors of the American Civil War, General Sherman once said:
“The American press is a shame and a reproach to a civilized people. When a man is too lazy to work and too cowardly to steal, he becomes an editor and manufactures public opinion.”
For over an hour, the American Press Corps (colloquially “the mainstream media) gave Donald Trump primetime uninterrupted coverage for another one of his unhinged liar fascist rants.
For over an uninterrupted hour, the mainstream media gave Donald Trump the opportunity to lie and spit in our faces.
A few weeks ago, I talked about the importance of AOC’s Instagram video that exposed backroom talks to pressure President Biden into dropping out of the race. In that video I discussed the importance of having an insider say out loud what everyone is saying. Many have hypothesized that AOC’s video helped secure Kamala Harris’ position in replacing Biden on the 2024 ticket because AOC’s video exposed that insiders were trying to also kick Harris out of contention as a DNC Presidential Candidate, wanting to find someone completely new.
Last night Lawrence O’Donnell went onto the air and said out loud what we have all been thinking about the mainstream media, almost like from an Aaron Sorkin episode of “The Newsroom.”
Lawrence O’Donnell said:
“I have never seen an industry slower at learning from its own stupid mistakes than the American News Business, and you cannot expect them in the next 89 days to figure out what they haven’t been able to figure out in 9 years — how to cover a ‘Trump for President’ campaign.”
Lawrence O’Donnell showed, for the first time that I have seen, palpable rage as he cut into the mainstream media’s hypocrisy in its behavior with Donald Trump versus President Biden and Kamala Harris. O’Donnell explained how the media completely and utterly failed to ask meaningful questions of substance to Donald Trump and absolutely failed to hold any accountability for Donald Trump as Trump lied to all of our faces.
O’Donnell stressed that this hypocrisy of the mainstream media is willful and intentional by juxtaposing the news’ gentle treatment of Trump with how it has ruthlessly attacked President Biden and his staff.
“They kept yelling at her [White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre], ‘you’re not answering the question.’ They were outraged. But she was actually answering the question! They don’t know what an answer is! And what they were pursuing turned out to be a lie. The next day, not one of them had a single question about what they were just screaming about in the White House Press Briefing Room because there was never anything to the story they were pursuing. It turns out that a doctor, who is a Parkinson’s specialist visited the White House a few times as that doctor had been doing for years before the Biden Presidency, and that doctor never once visited the White House to visit President Biden….
and all the wrath that they put into those questions just… evaporated because they were completely wrong and they never apologized for their misplaced anger in Karine Jean-Pierre.
And O’Donnell continued his anger and wrath, saving his most damning accusation for last:
“Not one of them dared to yell at Donald Trump today. Not one of them. Not one of them dared to yell, ‘you’re not answering the question.’ So the special treatment that Donald Trump gets from the Supreme Court and elsewhere extends, tragically and harmfully, and always has, to much of the Press Corps.”
O’Donnell’s segment against the mainstream media lasts about 25 minutes. You should watch the entirety of what O’Donnell had to say, but I clipped this piece of O’Donnell’s segment on MSNBC. I ask you to watch it, if nothing else of what O’Donnell had to say. This 3 minute clip is the most cutting:
“Anyone who then tells you that Kamala Harris has to answer questions from reporters because Donald Trump already answered questions from reporters is lying to themselves and to you, and you must not allow them to do it.
Please CRUSH them on social media when they do it because they will do it.”
Lawrence O’Donnell has done what AOC did a few weeks ago, and I thank him for his honesty and courage. O’Donnell has said out loud what we have all been thinking, and he is calling us to action. We were completely screwed by the mainstream media in 2016, which nearly cost us our country. The media is doing it all over again, and enough is enough.
Enough is enough!
We must, “crush them,” because, damn it, we are not going back.
