Take some time to read and listen to Greg Palast on this particular subject. Under Trump's leadership, Republicans have continuously made it more difficult for Americans to vote, and easier to throw out ballots that are probably not going their way. Trump talked about and whined about the election being stolen from him for four years, and came up with all kinds of reasons for why it was, without a single shred of evidence, then planned how to steal the next one using the same methods he whined about being used against him.
But how is it possible for a man whose first term in office was, by any measure, the single worst Presidency in all of American history, and who committed waves of crime with mountains of evidence produced in two major investigations, able to get the kind of support this demagogue has been able to maintain among a base that represents about 30% of registered voters? The man is a buffoon, an image, a fraud, a phony, a grifter whose old age dementia requires much more management of his appearances than the media claims about his predecessor. How is it that he has the kind of support that he does?
It's because we have no free press left in America, and because he is a public figure who has a specific identity, and whose obsession with money, which leads him to place financial value on every aspect of life, is exactly the kind of President the billionaire class in America need to be able to run the country their way. They control the media, having turned it into a for-profit venture like everything else they touch. So with money as the bottom line of everything, they have conducted a four year media campaign to re-elect Trump as President.
The media just kept covering Trump and his phony sensationalism. They sometimes helped create a narrative out of some issue he brought up that wasn't really an issue, and they gave him as much favorable coverage as they could when long delayed indictments started getting handed down. They turned the attention away from his legal troubles, conveying the narrative that he was being attacked and persecuted in a witch hunt, using his words, and his narrative, while ignoring the sitting President and refusing to give his achievements the coverage they deserved. He was given a four year free television campaign for the Presidency.
Jake Tapper, of CNN, has helped to show us in which direction the bias has been pointing, with the release of his most recent book. His bias is now completely clear.
Democrats Bear Some Responsibility
Democrats did not take advantage of the tools at their disposal, including the FCC's Equal Time rule (not to be confused with their "Fairness Doctrine") to make sure they got fair coverage. The rule technically applies only during the time period considered to be part of the actual political campaign, but there is no denying Trump was campaigning to get back in the White House long before he ever left it the first time.
Then, of course, when Kamala Harris made an appearance on Saturday Night Live, you could hear the screaming about how unfair that was, and how it violated that rule, all across the country. I can't recall ever seeing any converage, or hearing any complaints from Democrats about all of the free coverage Trump got that Biden didn't get.
With control of the White House and Congress in their hands following the 2020 election, Democrats could not seem to organize themselves to deal with Trump as "an existential threat to American Democracy," as they claimed he was. He committed crimes, most notably inciting a violent insurrection against the Capitol, and stealing classified documents, and that was after his collusion with a foreign country and the crimes he committed prior to 2016 documented in the The Mueller Report.
The only explanation offered for the failure of the Justice department to prosecute over 90 crimes for which he was indicted and for which there was a mountain of evidence for slam-dunk verdicts is some whining about how the courts, including the Supreme Court, were stacked against them, causing interminable delays, though admittedly, the Attorney General was also dragging his feet. "It would look too political," was the reason given, by spokespersons for President Biden himself, if they got more aggressive.
So they ignored the calls of those within the party to take neccessary actions that would expitite his prosecution, including amending the judiciary act to expand the Supreme Court, or "pack" it, as the vernacular suggests, a move that would have made the Biden administration the single most accomplished Presidency of the modern era. Not only would that have moved Trump's trials along to verdicts long before any campaign's official start, it would have saved Roe, overturned the ridiculous Presidential immunity from prosecution ruling they issued, and rid us of Citizens United.
America would be a much different place today, May 18, 2025, had they done those things. And the media narrative would be completely different.
This is something Democrats continue to struggle with. But the narrative of having saved American Democracy from the threat of a demagogue who wants to be dictator would have been accomplished. And that would have spelled victory in the election and progress in Congress right now.
"Too Political" Was One Media Narrative
The fear of looking "too political" is a media narrative that has plagued Democrats since the Obama Presidency. Democrats are faced with undue media criticism when legislation got through Congress without a single Republican vote, as if that were a bad thing. Frankly, I don't see it that way. If they succeed in getting legislation through Congress, even if no Republican supports it, that's a success they should celebrate. There's nothing notable or laudable in obstructionism. But the media tried hard to shape public opinion by placing the blame for single party legislative success during the Obama administration on the Democrats.
I vote for Democrats to be elected to Congress, and I would be furious if my representative or senator stepped back, took a look at how Republicans felt, and were planning to vote about a piece of legislation Democrats were pushing, and decided to vote against it because it was not getting any bi-partisan support. But, not having anything else to criticize, that's the theme that the media took up with the things Obama achieved, largely with the support of Democrats. They, for the most part, supported McConnell and the obstructionists, and didn't use negative tones to talk about their obstructionism.
We are not hearing any media criticism at all, except from a few predictably moderate sources, of the fact that the entire Project 2025 agenda is built on single-party support.
It's a complicated search to figure out exactly how and where corporately owned media outlets and networks are connected to ownership that is favorable to the agenda of the Heritage Foundation. Clearly Fox News, sued, found liable for bias and ordered to pay almost a billion dollars to a vote counting machine manufacturer, is run by the Heritage Foundation. How much influence they have over the other networks is visible in the manner in which they handle these issues. Only MSNBC has offered any editorial criticism, or handles it in a similar manner to the criticism of the Obama Administration for moving forward with only the votes of Democrats in Congress.
Very Little of a Free Press Remains
With most Americans now locked inside media "silos" and refusing to acknowledge or pay attention to anything that doesn't agree with their political perspective, there is really very little accountability left in the idea of a "free press." And it seems that the politically controlled and ill-equipped FCC is unwilling or incapable of enforcing regulations for broadcast licensing that demand equal time and fairness in reporting. Rules designed to keep media outlets from being bought and controlled by political interests are simply ignored and not enforced.
A sizeable chunk of the population doesn't get its news from traditional sources that still follow some kind of journalistic ethics. They get it from a virtually unregulated media with a plethora of websites and podcasts all aimed at cornering a niche to make money. There's little regulation, as far as the standards of the FCC are concerned and ethics, integrity and honesty are no longer values of media sources, including those who claim to be "Christian." Some of them are the worst violators when it comes to truth and integrity.
It's up to each individual American to do the hard work of research, to determine where the truth lies without being distracted by appeals that are based more on their monetary value or commercial appeal than they are on any set of human values. Read books carefully, noting the author's perspective and background. Listen to podcasts with discernment, applying those critical thinking skills learned in school, if those are even being taught anymore, and pass these skills along to your children. Otherwise, we become victims of propaganda doing the will of someone else who has the money to purchase the means of manipulation.
Our freedom depends on it.
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