Ever since former President Donald Trump waltzed onto the political stage back during the 2016 election, folks on the left have responded with all kinds of absurdities.
One of the most ridiculous complaints anti-Trumpers have peddled since then is the claim that the media is not being sufficiently biased against the former president. During a panel on Wednesday’s episode of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” participants repeated this argument, saying that the supposed lack of anti-Trump bias in the media is giving him an “advantage” over Vice President Kamala Harris.
The focus of the discussion was Trump’s supposed crime of cutting a campaign ad at Arlington National Cemetery while committing the unpardonable sin of meeting with the family members of military personnel who were murdered by terrorists during President Joe Biden’s disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The panelists were conversing about criticism coming from Jim McCain, the son of the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Journalist and commentator Mike Barnicle complained that “There’s a false equivalency going on in the coverage of this race in that Donald Trump can say whatever crazy thing he wants to say…and it’s not really covered in the sense that it’s covered describing who said it, why he said it and who the man is – Trump.”
“And always in that story in the false equivalency by too many reporters and too many American newspapers is also: ‘By the way Kamala Harris changed her mind on fracking.’ They always throw in something like that in coverage of the story. It is ridiculous. We don’t cover the man for how dangerous he is,” Barnicle added.
Host Joe Scarborough concurred, noting that “The shocking statements come every day, and not surprising but still shocking what he says.”
“For some reason the mainstream media, nine years into Donald Trump’s era in American politics still doesn’t know how to cover Donald Trump. They still are engaging even at this late hour in moral relativism and saying: ‘Yeah, but, yeah, but.’ And, again, they just don’t know how to put it in proper perspective because, as I said yesterday, they are so concerned about being objective that they’re treating this race like it was 1996…
“Their ‘objectivity’, and I put that word in quotes, their ‘objectivity’ is actually not objectivity at all. It ends up playing to Donald Trump’s advantage every day because they are so numbed by the hate, the hate speech, that has spewed out of his mouth for the past nine years.”
Co-host Jonathan Lemire, Politico’s White House bureau chief, argued that “The media has certainly improved” when it comes to being more biased against Trump and that “We were better at covering 2020 than we were in 2016.”
“I think in many ways we have been good about costing Trump’s post-presidency,” he added.
The co-host then descended further into hysteria:
“But you’re right, in an effort to appear objective and balanced, mistakes are being made and applied to both candidates when Donald Trump is a different animal. He is an insurrectionist candidate. We should never lose sight of it. He lies more than any other major political figure we have ever had, not even close. He is someone who flouts every rule and norm. He is someone who has been convicted of a crime, and all of that needs to be said and said. I think the other focus here needs to be as the media, on the stakes of this election, what it means. Not just the day-to-day developments. Yes, we have to cover that, too. It does matter. But it is about the stake. It is about what it means for the nation’s democracy and future.”
It is amazing that these people can still make these claims with straight faces.
Media figures spent almost the entire last week berating Trump for the Arlington National Cemetery nontroversy, behaving as if he had somehow committed a massive crime against humanity for visiting with the Gold Star families who invited him to come. They repeated the lie that he referred to deceased service members as “suckers” ad nauseam.
If Scarborough and company believe this to be “objective,” I’d hate to see what they would view as biased.
However, they are right in asserting that the media helps Trump – but not in the way they think. One of the reasons Trump won in 2016 and could possibly win in November is largely due to the apparent lack of objectivity displayed by the press. The many lies media figures have peddled about the former president and his supporters only serves to galvanize those who understand that much of the establishment media are nothing more than propaganda outlets for the Democratic Party. This episode shows that these people still have not learned their lesson.
