The Hill: President Biden Leaving a "Mess" For Trump to "Clean Up"
There are times when I am reluctant to link an article, an editorial that drops in a few facts among the fiction to take a backhanded slap at President Biden, as an example of what we can expect from the corporate-owned and controlled American media. But this piece, by Liz Peek (doesn't ring any bells for me) in The Hill, which isn't really a widely distributed publication, as far as print media goes (24,000 circulation), is what we've seen for four years, and what we can expect for the next four. The Hill is owned by Nexstar Media Group. And why is that important to note?
Nexstar is the largest corporate owner of television stations in the United States. That includes local network affiliates in larger markets, and independent stations, like WGN in Chicago, as well as stations in smaller markets, places like San Angelo, Texas. And that does indeed have an impact on the perspective with which The Hill, along with those other network affiliates, delivers the news.
And here's the perspective. Trump, Trump, Trump.
From just personal observation, it was pretty clear that the American media engaged in a four year campaign, during the Biden Administration, to report everything Trump was saying or doing in response. I haven't seen any specific studies that have analyzed the news reports from the past four years in each category of media, but I wouldn't argue with a conclusion that found Trump was mentioned on every media outlet that has news coverage on a daily basis, since leaving the White House, and that the amount of time he got in terms of coverage was at least twice the amount given to the Biden administration.
And yes, I'd be willing to bet on that conservative estimate.
So seeing this very biased, slanted piece from The Hill is not surprising. The media seems to be getting itself in order to flatter the incoming President and administration and win favor. It's difficult to take what has mostly been beneficial to people, and make it sound like nothing. So the rough edges and lack of professional journalistic standards in this piece are not surprising. But the goal wasn't to be politically neutral, or fair. It was to make President Biden look ineffective and as bad as possible. And that's been made a little easier for this kind of editorial, which is what this is, because Democrats have struggled with their ability to to control the narrative, and get the kind of mass media coverage of the accomplishments of this administration, the best we've seen since Lyndon Johnson, that was necessary to give voters a realistic picture of the election, including everything negative that they left on the cutting floor about Trump.
If seeing inflation drop to 2.6% from the highs that it reached in 2022 and early 2023, as a direct result of Biden administration economic policy, including a sharp drop in oil and energy prices, is "inflation that refuses to die," then we need to sit down with Webster's dictionary and redefine every single word it contains. And really, how upset and disturbed can we be that we are replenishing the strategic oil reserve, more than 40% of its capacity, with oil we are buying at a rate that is more than 25% less than what was sold off to help increase the supply and bring down prices when they were high? Adding a significant amount of money to the treasury to offset that federal debt the author was whining about is somehow a bad thing and a "mess" left behind for Trump to fix?
The author claims that the Biden administration is investing taxpayer dollars in "an educational system that teaches kids to hate their country," which is a ridiculous and unsupported assertion that she doesn't bother to corroborate. It's an appeal to populist prejudice against education that dares to suggest their racism, bigotry and ignorance is the root of problems that hold this country back. The system, she says, fails to deliver "youngsters able to read and write," a common extremist assertion which can't be supported by facts and which conveniently leaves out the fact that this administration has not only significantly increased educational spending, but also has produced results that the previous Trump administration did not succeed at delivering.
How is abolishing the Department of Education going to resolve those problems? Well, don't expect opinion writers like Peek to know, she's an obvious victim of our school's inability to deliver youngsters who can read and write.
The anti-Democracy bias is clear in considering Ukraine as part of a "mess," and in using language like "extricating the US from Ukraine's war with Russia," which spells doom for Ukrainian democracy, a flippant and disgraceful posture that will go a long way, once again, to reducing respect for America and its stature in the world, just like happened during the last Trump administration. The fact that they keep asserting otherwise would be a laughable example of Trump's foreign policy ignorance and incompetence, which is basically a cowardly turning tail and running from difficult problems, appeasing dictators as if he were the reincarnation of Neville Chamberlain, if it did not have such horrific results for those who must endure the results of Trump's cowardice, like the Ukrainians, or the Palestinians in Gaza.
I also had to laugh at her attempt to make the record job growth, low unemployment, economic growth surge we've experienced, including the stability of the dollar and the strong advancement of the stock market, sound like it was some confused tangle of complicated conspiracies, and at her assertion that somehow, spending money that Congress has appropriated for the benefit of the people is "bad." It's long past time, Liz, for this country's 99-percenters to pay their fair share of what they've been provided to make them rich, for the benefit of all Americans, without whom they wouldn't have what they do. So if the Biden administration is working to make sure all those checks get written before January 20th, 2025, then more power to them.
This, people, is pure propaganda, American style. And much of the terminology, and many of the assertions being made, are reflections of the very things that Democrats and some independents accused the Trump administration of doing when he was in office the first time. He did leave a real mess, a massive increase in government debt, undermining the American military and leaving it vulnerable by negotiating with the Taliban dictatorship, at Camp David of all places, undermining American efforts to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran, and a disastrous failure to take action to protect the economy and the population of the US from COVID. Peek isn't even very creative, clearly not even picking up a thesaurus to change some of the terms.
If this is what American education over the course of the last generation has produced, then Peek is right about one thing, and that is the fact that an effort must be made to improve it. But don't expect the Trump administration to be innovative enough to make it happen. The concept of a free press has been lost, and so has the concept of a constitutional democracy in an established republic. The United States is becoming an oligarchy of the rich.
And the media is a major contributor to our downfall.
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