The Washington Post goes off the deep end as it becomes clear that Donald Trump is on track for criminal indictment
Recently I predicted that as it became more obvious that Donald Trump is on track for criminal indictment in New York and Georgia, the major media outlets would become more frantic in their insistence that Trump is somehow going to get away with it all. After all, the media has spent the past year chasing ratings by hyping the narrative that Trump will run in 2024 and magically win no matter what, and for that notion to have any credibility, the media also has to hype the narrative that Trump will get away with it all.
If this prediction sounded cynical on my part, that’s because it was. I was hoping the major media outlets would prove me wrong. It’s always a good thing when they do their job honestly. And to their credit, some MSNBC hosts have in fact accurately covered just how deep the grand jury process is against Trump in New York and Georgia, if falling short of quite acknowledging that when prosecutors get this deep with a grand jury, it nearly always results in criminal indictment.
But now, unfortunately, the Washington Post is quickly proving my cynical prediction correct. In a new article (I won’t reward the author by linking to it but you’re free to google it), it insists that Trump will indeed somehow magically get away with it all. The basis for this assertion? As usual, nothing. But this article is unusual in that it doesn’t just try to distract audiences from the fact that Trump is on track to be indicted; it gets weirdly personal.
This Washington Post author not only attacks everyone from MSNBC to the Lincoln Project for daring to factually point out that Trump is on track for indictment, it also accuses Palmer Report of being a “conspiratorial website” for daring to point out these same facts. Uh, no. It’s not “conspiratorial” when Palmer Report points to the overwhelming publicly available information showing that Trump is in the process of being criminally indicted in two states. It’s just Palmer Report doing the Washington Post’s job for it, while the Washington Post wastes its time taking bizarre cheap shots at Palmer Report.
This particular Washington Post article goes on to insist that even if Trump is indicted, convicted, and sent to prison, he’ll still somehow magically be a frontrunner in 2024. The article cites the fact that Eugene Debs ran for President from a prison cell in 1920. But as Palmer Report has long liked to point out, Debs only got 3% of the vote – a reminder that you can’t effectively run for President from prison.
And that’s the real kicker: in his effort to distract us from the facts at hand not only is this Washington Post author falsely accusing us of being conspiracy theorists, he’s doing it because he’s trying to promote things that actually are conspiracy theories. 100% of the publicly available evidence points to Trump being indicted in two states, yet this author insists without evidence that Trump will magically evade it. And, as conspiracy theorists often tend to do, he insists that even in the unlikely event he’s wrong, the outcome will still end up being exactly the same.
Sure, in theory it’s possible that even at this advanced grand jury stage, Trump could still somehow evade indictment. But in theory it’s also possible that we’re all being controlled by lizard people. It’s just that there’s zero evidence to support the notion that Trump can wave a magic wand and derail the grand jury process, just as there’s zero evidence that lizard people are waving a magic wand and controlling us. These are both baseless and borderline hallucinatory conspiracy theories. And if you try to claim that either of these conspiracy theories is definitely or likely happening, then you’re Alex Jones.
And that’s the real problem. Major media outlets increasingly decide what narrative they think will get them the highest ratings or the most page views, then work backwards to dishonestly construct analysis that appears to support those narratives. The only difference is that the major media outlets gloss over the lunatic parts where Trump would need to be casting spells with a magic in order to cause the grand jury to vanish or cause the prison cell bars to melt, while people like Alex Jones spell out the lunatic parts with glee. It’s just that when the major media outlets rely on conspiracy theories to drive ratings, they tend to dress those conspiracy theories up in a suit and tie and call it “vigilance.”
In any case, this Washington Post article unfortunately points to where most (not all, but most) of the mainstream media is heading in 2022. The more strongly and obviously the facts point to Donald Trump being criminally indicted in New York and Georgia as the year goes on, the more loudly and frantically the media will try to distract audiences from the facts, in order to cling to its preferred ratings-driven narrative about Trump being a threat in 2024.
When the major media outlets are treating the facts as an annoyance that must be swatted away, promoting baseless conspiracy theories in order to cling to its preferred ratings-driven narratives, and lashing out at anyone who dares to cite the facts of the matter, it means we have a real problem on our hands. The only question is how fiercely audiences are going to be willing to push back against these media hijinks, in the hope of making clear to the media that it’s not going to be able to get the ratings and page views it needs by playing these dishonest games, and that it would be better off simply giving us the truth instead.
