Earlier this week, 2-Time Pulitzer Winning Journalist Nicholas Kristof said in his new book that the "press ‘shouldn’t be neutral’ with coverage of Trump’s threats to democracy."
Uggh, not this again.
3 months ago, CNN's Dean Obeidallah made his case that "Trump is Hitler." I called Obeidallah's bluff and said "let's say that Obeidallah is right though, Trump is Hitler. Wouldn't you try to kill Hitler? I am being dead serious here. I don't advocate violence against any politician, but if you really thought the re-incarnation of Hitler was alive, wouldn't you try to kill him? A top-end CNN reporter would have almost unfettered access to a former president."
Last month, cleveland.com's Chris Quinn defended their non-neutral coverage of Donald Trump. "As for those who equate Trump and Joe Biden, that’s false equivalency. Biden has done nothing remotely close to the egregious, anti-American acts of Trump. We can debate the success and mindset of our current president, as we have about most presidents in our lifetimes, but Biden was never a threat to our democracy. Trump is." Quinn then went on to equate our election this year to when Hitler came to power in the 1930's.
So when Kristof warned of a "populist authoritarianism," CNN's Oliver Darcy chimed in "(Kristof's) book, of course, arrives as the American press still wrestles with how to cover Donald Trump and the anti-democratic movement which he leads."
You know how things work in Mexico? The drug cartels run most of the country and have killed hundreds of politicians in the last decade. Over a hundred Mexican journalists have been killed in the last 20 years. There is no end in sight to the violence south of the border and I haven't even mentioned the journalists that have been jailed by crooked politicians.
You know how things work in Russia? You know how many politicians have died by simply opposing Putin? He doesn't have to tell you. How many opposition leaders have just fallen out of windows? And, according to the New York Times, 2 dozen Russian journalists have been jailed since January 1st of this year alone.
You know how things worked in the United States between the years 2017-2021? In Trump's first term, you know how many of his political opponents in this country were murdered by his administration? ZERO. How many American journalists were murdered by the Trump administration? ZERO. How many American journalists continue to rot in prison today due to Trump? ZERO. Then "Hitler Trump" was voted out of office.
Your reply is January 6th happened? January 6th was a temper tantrum, not an insurgency. How many generals are being charged with trying to return Trump to power? ZERO. In a real insurgency, you need guns and an army, not left-wing journalists decrying the loser's jingoistic language.
Who was the president when Edward Snowden went on the run? Obama.
What about Julian Assange? Also Obama.
You want to talk about American press freedoms, those are the 2 guys you want to talk about. Maybe we should be considering charges against Barack Obama for limiting press freedoms.
Is Trump mean? Yes.
Is Trump crass? Yes.
Is Trump bombastic? Yes.
Does Trump talk and not think? Yes, yes, yes. His followers interpret that as telling it as it is, but Trump isn't a dictator, he is a narcissist who still thinks he's on a reality show. I am convinced he doesn't remember what he said yesterday. Trump is also a populist, he doesn't have a guiding moral core. What he says is dictated by the way the wind is blowing.
Did Trump send the Feds to Atlanta, padlock the front doors of CNN, and arrest all the journalists within? Of course not.
Well you're warning me that could still happen? Based on what? More bad Trump language?
Back in 2021, Travis Kelce said well over half the league smoked marijuana. How did almost no one get caught? Because they weren't stupid about it. (The NFLPA doesn't test for THC anymore.)
The same exact thing goes for Trump.
How many affairs do you think John F. Kennedy had?
How many affairs do you think Bill Clinton had?
The reason Trump is in this legal trouble today is because he couldn't figure out how to get out of a jam that nearly all his predecessors escaped. It took the public nearly 200 years to figure out that Thomas Jefferson had sex with one of his slaves. A lot.
Let me take this from a slightly different angle, In the last 2 years, 5 different employees at my day job have been called to jury duty, including myself. The total number of days actually served between the five? 3 days. A generation ago, jury duty was considered a person's civic duty. Now an unpredictable jury is used as a threat to cause more people to accept plea deals. Not only do jurors not want to be in court, but neither do the lawyers, judges, or defendants.
The Stormy Daniels Trial doesn't make me think that Donald Trump is evil. It makes me think he's an idiot and doesn't know how to plead out or do damage control.
In the E. Jean Carroll Case, Trump's behavior was even worse. In that case, Donald Trump looked across the courtroom and claimed he didn't have sex with that "old bat." He obviously did, but there should be a bigger question involved. Let's say Trump believes that he didn't have sex with Carroll and he doesn't believe that he's lying. That means:
He has had sex with so many women, he can't keep track.
He can't imagine Carroll 30 years younger, when she was "good looking."
Either scenario is bad. Rush Limbaugh popularized Bill Clinton's "bimbo eruptions," but Americans mostly overlooked Clinton's marital difficulties. In Trump's case with Carroll, the left is mostly using the case to embarrass him instead of using it practically as a symptom of his cognitive decline.
I love to use hyperbole and sarcasm, they are 2 of my favorite literary tools. But a few weeks ago, I stretched the truth to its limits.
In the article "Another Pulitzer Free Day For Me" I admitted that Vladimir Kara-Murza's writing was both more important, and better, than mine in the Commentary Section for the Pulitzer Prize. And that's true, I stand by that.
But the Pulitzer used to be an American Prize. A few years back, the Pulitzer Board changed the rules to foreigners in American Publications. Now whining that I lost on a technicality is sour grapes, but the other two finalists were, once again, not better than my entry. Brian Lyman's stories were mostly woke crap. Here's the ruse though, Brian Lyman works for a non-profit journalistic entity. When the Pulitzers say they want to be more inclusive of non-traditional voices, they mean more independent voices...that hold Left-Leaning World Views that move their talking points.
Am I really mad at Brian Lyman though? No. Brian Lyman is Brian Lyman. I'm really mad at myself because when I submitted my entry for the Pulitzer, it had no chance of winning. I don't play "the game" very well. I basically got tricked into trying to win a popularity contest with my unpopular blog.
I'm upset because I used to be smarter than that.
<sigh>
A few years back, Donald Trump slapped some tariffs on China. Joe Biden mocked Trump as being poor on foreign relations and economic fundamentals.
This week, when Joe Biden slapped some tariffs on China, the press was obsessed with Trump's dirty laundry. The Libertarian websites that I follow screamed "all tariffs are bad, no matter who installs them."
Both presidents did the same exact thing. The only difference was the media coverage.
I didn't read every news article over the past year, but if there was one series that deserved a Pulitzer, it was Matt Taibbi's Twitter Files. Every time Matt Labash is at the Drudge Report, that commentary is spot on. Those are the independent voices that should be getting Pulitzers.
I'm only an amateur with a day job, but that doesn't make my view point any less valid as an average American Citizen. Maybe I'll start my own award scam called the Beacons and only give awards to those that agree with me.
Editor's Note: Co-founder Ted doesn't get a Beacon, he doesn't agree with me enough.
Now in order to gain some sort of intellectual gravitas, this is the part where a good writer would quote Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela.
"You don't know Peace 'til you've had Suffering" - J. Nothing
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