Mainstream media beware
MAGA reserves its most scathing invective for people who hurt Donald Trump the most. I’m dismayed anew every time I encounter the blast of anger the kindly octogenarian Dr Anthony Fauci still inspires. His “crime”? He rolled his eyes whenever Donald Trump said something silly or stupid or dangerous about Covid, and Trump’s critics used those images to mock him. To this day Adam Schiff, the outspoken congressman and eloquent manager at Trump’s first impeachment trial, gets hundreds of posts filled with white hot vituperation in response to even his most harmless posts on “X.” Many of those responses are unprintable.
Mere critics are one thing, but the men and women who presided over Trump’s greatest humiliations and largest defeats have been consigned to a special place in MAGA hell by the drooling lunatics and fanatics of MAGA. They cannot bear to see their Lord and Saviour defeated by mere mortals. So it was no surprise when Trump recently singled out Adam Schiff as posing an even bigger threat to a free and fair election than foreign terrorists or illegal immigrants. “The thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff,” Trump said.
Trump also launched an ugly attack on opponents in general to Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, who sobered up long enough to interview him. Bartiromo raised the spectre of outside agitators or immigrants, whom she falsely accused of committing crimes. “I think the bigger problem are[sic] the people from within,” Trump proclaimed. “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the national guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
At a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday night, Kamala Harris slammed Donald Trump for his comments and showed a clip of the former convicted felon making the remarks. “A second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous. Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged,” Harris told the crowd after playing the clip.
It should be noted that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids the use of the military from regular civil law enforcement. It was enacted in response to the abuses resulting from the extensive employment of the army in civil law enforcement during the Civil War and the Reconstruction. The Act does allow for legislated exceptions, however. And no doubt Trump’s Supreme Court would ultimately forgive Trump for any abuse of the military for what they would inevitably deem an, ahem, “official act” by the president.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and expert on fascism at New York University, told NBC that Trump was flagging up what he planned to do as president, which she compared to the “‘strongman’ ruling templates of Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin, the leaders of Hungary, India and Russia respectively. He’s actually rehearsing, in a sense, what he would be doing as head of state, which is what Orbán does, Modi is doing, Putin has long done,” she said.
Such rhetoric as Trump’s from any political candidate of the past would have been instantly disqualifying. I’m old enough to remember, and so should anyone over the age of 20, when it was. But today it’s all part of the Trumpian political landscape, normalised and “sanewashed” by a complicit mainstream media.
But, but, but, you say, what about Rachel Maddow? What about Lawrence O’Donnell? What about the pundits and commentators of CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS who occasionally vehemently push back? What about them? As far as I’m concerned, they are also passively complicit. Rachel Maddow, for example, is a multi-millionaire. She earns $30 million a year at MSNBC. More than that, she practically owns the network. She could march into the network president’s office and demand that Trump be called out for what he is, a fascist dictator. She could decree instant death to bothsidesisms and sanewashing, a network wide moratorium on all future Trump apologetics. And if they didn’t jolly well love it she could go somewhere else. If nothing else she could start her own YouTube channel that would have two million subscribers inside of one hour after she launched it.
In any case, the mainstream media needs to sit up and take notice. Viewers are defecting to social media with good reason. The Midas Touch Network, Brian Tyler Cohen, David Pakman, et al, have subscribers in the millions and they are growing every day. People are tired of corporate news and they want the authentic, unadorned truth. If the networks and cable news don’t wake up they will find themselves out of a job in five years. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.