Things are about to get a lot harder for Donald Trump
Although Republicans are obsessed with accusing the media of having a liberal bias and have ramped up those attacks considerably in just the last few weeks, the reality is of course much more complex. All too often, journalists and copy editors feel a need to appear fair and balanced, even in the cases when no such balance exists.
One egregious example of this is when Associated Press reported on the government shutdown last year and implied that Democrats shared some of the blame for refusing to fund Donald Trump’s border wall. Yet another was during the 2016 election, when pundits tried to make Hillary’s emails seem like an actual scandal, to not appear overly biased against Donald Trump, largely ignoring the fact that nearly everyone in Trump’s campaign used a private server.
Now that Donald Trump is having a hard time going after Joe Biden without the dishonest attacks blowing up disastrously in his face, he’s decided to ramp up his attacks on Kamala Harris. Trump is once again doubling down on what will play to the ears of his racist base, which isn’t much of a surprise. The problem is, his attacks are more of the same – moving from the baseless birther nonsense to calling her angry and nasty. It was so vapid and on the nose, that even AP called it for what it was: “[T]he racism and sexism underlying Trump’s critique of the first Black woman and person of Asian descent on a major party ticket are part of an aggressive strategy to appeal to white suburban voters.”
This isn’t to say that the AP is above writing outrageous headlines and won’t do it again, but suggests that it’s going to be harder for Trump to get free publicity through the media than it was in 2016 – and the racial tensions he’s ignited have left little room for doubt about what his strategy is. America has a chance to redeem itself by voting Donald Trump and Republicans out of office by as big a margin as possible by November 3.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making