Sometimes, the mainstream media looks to be biased in favor of authoritarianism. The AP reports about a recent example:
At least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Donald Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received.
Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms.
Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these embarrassing missives, and mainstream news organizations covered them avidly.
Politico wrote over the weekend about receiving emails starting July 22 from a person identified as “Robert” that included a 271-page campaign document about Vance and a partial vetting report on Sen. Marco Rubio, who was also considered as a potential vice president. Both Politico and the Post said that two people had independently confirmed that the documents were authentic.
“Like many such vetting documents,” The Times wrote of the Vance report, “they contained past statements with the potential to be embarrassing or damaging, such as Mr. Vance’s remarks casting aspersions on Mr. Trump.”
The Times said it would not discuss why it had decided not to print details of the internal communications. A spokesperson for the Post said: “As with any information we receive, we take into account the authenticity of the materials, any motives of the source and assess the public interest in making decisions about what, if anything, to publish.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, said over the weekend that “any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies.”
It’s also easy to recall how, in 2016, candidate Trump and his team encouraged coverage of documents on the Clinton campaign that Wikileaks had acquired from hackers. It was widespread: A BBC story promised “18 revelations from Wikileaks’ hacked Clinton emails” and Vox even wrote about Podesta’s advice for making superb risotto.
Brian Fallon, then a Clinton campaign spokesperson, noted at the time how striking it was that concern about Russian hacking quickly gave way to fascination over what was revealed. “Just like Russia wanted,” he said.
So in 2024 it is OK for the NYT, WaPo and Politico to withhold the juicy bits from the leaked documents because of potentially embarrassing or damaging content for Vance and/or DJT. But in 2016, the MSM freely blasted out everything that was damaging to Hillary, helping to put DJT in power. What happened here?
Does anyone notice DJT's shameless hypocrisy in his 2016 vs 2024 mindset, or it is just me?
Q: Is this 2016 vs 2024 story a nothingburger, or is it evidence that the MSM is pro-authoritarian biased, stupidly incompetent or both?
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Random news bit:
Donald Trump said on his Elon Musk interview that he might leave the country if he loses the upcoming US presidential election. He said he would go to Venezuela to hide out. Does this make him a bigger flight risk? Is it possible this could have cause his bail to be revoked?____________________________________________________________________
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Regarding DJT's outrageous behaviors: For some reason, two bits of what is standard news about DJT sparked deep anger in me. Why today? Who knows. Anyway, my anger is directed at DJT, the entire Republican Party and DJT's emotional support billionaires, Elon Musk in this case.
In the first bit, The Hill reports that a Democratic political group filed a lawsuit claiming that DJT violated campaign finance law by virtue of his 2 hour "interview" with Elon Musk on X:
The Democratic organization End Citizens United filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday over former President Trump’s interview with tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Trump spoke with Musk on social media platform X, which Musk owns, on Monday night for roughly two hours after their conversation was delayed by technical difficulties. In its complaint on Tuesday, End Citizens United alleged that the interview was a corporate contribution that violated campaign finance laws.
“The Donald Trump-Elon Musk campaign rally hosted on X wasn’t just an incoherent diatribe of lies marred by technical difficulties, it was a blatantly illegal corporate contribution to Donald Trump’s campaign,” End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller said in a statement.
“This brazen corporate contribution undermines campaign finance laws and would set a dangerous precedent for unfettered, direct corporate engagement in campaigns. The FEC must investigate this corporate-funded campaign event and hold Trump, his campaign, and X Corp. accountable,” she added.
The complaint notes that federal campaign finance law prohibits corporations from making contributions to federal candidates, who cannot accept the contributions. It said that the “conversation” between the former president and Musk “amounted to a virtual campaign event for Donald J. Trump financed by X.”
That is infuriating. If Harris had done the same, DJT and the GOP would be howling in self-righteous outrage about the horrible breaking of sacred laws.
Also infuriating, the courts are not going to hold DJT or Musk accountable any time soon, if ever. The radical Republican USSC hates campaign finance laws as undue burdens on "free speech."More importantly, the UUSSC secretly hates campaign finance laws as undue burdens on corruption because they impose some transparency on bribery. If this winds up at the USSC, one can see the applicable law likely falling as an unconstitutional burden on "free speech."
The 2nd bit, is an item from Reuters about DJT holding the courts in utter contempt and never, ever, accepting an adverse ruling against him:
NEW YORK, Aug 14 (Reuters) - A New York judge declined for a third time to step aside from the case in which Donald Trump was convicted of charges involving hush money paid to a porn star, dismissing the former U.S. president's claim of conflict of interest related to political consultancy work by the judge's daughter.
As he did in April and in August 2023, Justice Juan Merchan in a decision released on Wednesday denied a request by Trump's lawyers that he recuse himself from the first case involving criminal charges against a former U.S. president. Merchan is scheduled to sentence Trump on Sept. 18.
"Defendant has provided nothing new for this Court to consider. Counsel has merely repeated arguments that have already been denied by this and higher courts" and were "rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims," Merchan wrote in the ruling, dated Aug. 13.[DJT's utter contempt for the court and the rule of law cannot get much clearer than this]
A spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
"The Highly Conflicted Judge should have long ago recused himself from this case," Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Trump was found guilty by a jury on May 30 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for having covered up former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen's $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to avert a sex scandal before the 2016 U.S. election.
Two months later, his lawyers made their third request that Merchan step aside, arguing that his daughter's work for a political consultancy that has counted Democratic campaigns among its clients - including the unsuccessful bid by Kamala Harris for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination - posed a conflict of interest.
That 2nd bit about DJT asking for the 3rd time for the judge to step aside due to an alleged conflict of interest is well beyond an insulting outrage. DJT himself operates with no ethical concerns, including actual, blatant conflicts of interest. But here he howls in sanctimonious moral outrage when there is even a faint whiff of an appearance of a conflict he has no basis to howl about. His shameless hypocrisy is off the charts.
Q: Is Germaine being irrational or too wuss for having been triggered by DJT and the toxic combination of his authoritarianism, constant mendacity, ghastly corruption, contempt for the rule of law, and hypocrisy?
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