I have just re-read a Brian Stelter article written for The N. Y. Times of Aug. 29, 2020. Entitled “Trump’s Favorite Four-Letter Word,” it cites the former president’s increasing use of the term “hoax” to denounce the mainstream news and much of what it was saying about him as the November election approached. To refer to misinformation is one thing, Stelter says, as mistakes are sometimes made in reporting the facts. But the word “hoax,” which Trump began using with increasing regularity in 2017, suggests his critics are malicious and indeed utterly lacking in journalistic integrity. Stelter cites the the opinion of linguist John McWhorter who says, accusingly, that the word is “angry and mean” and “carries an air of accusation, of transgression.” So the gist of the article is that Trump is given to angry, accusatory rants with no real basis in reality, though the article in question is itself little more than an angry, accusatory diatribe consisting of the very sort of “fake news” denounced by the former president.
I have before me a stack of articles citing the efforts of Twitter, Facebook, MSNBC and Stelter’s own CNN to stifle the Hunter Biden story as the Nov. 2020 election approached, all with the intention of destroying any chance Trump may have had of winning. Gee, was this stratagem “malicious”? Did it entail the propagation of a “hoax”? Was it a violation of the peoples’ right to know; in fact a disgusting violation of Democracy itself?
Biden has said in various interviews that he never discussed his son’s highly questionable foreign business dealings with him. Hunter’s laptop proves this to be a brazen lie.
As pointed out by The Epoch Times on Dec.2, a senior FBI agent confessed that both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had frequently met with social media companies in an effort to get them to suppress references to the Hunter Biden story as the 2020 election approached. Fifty-one “intelligence” agents actually signed a letter saying the N.Y. Post story was mere “misinformation.” Various “liberal” outlets which supported that narrative have since admitted they were wrong. Of course doing so months after Biden’s election victory hardly makes up for their lack of journalistic integrity. The Attorney Generals of both Missouri and Louisiana have sued the Biden administration about its involvement in this massive cover-up.
As reported by The Blaze on Dec. 3, Elon Musk has made public the e-mails of various Twitter officials in which they discussed the pressure imposed upon them by Biden’s people to suppress his son’s story. Musk has actually fired James Baker, a former FBI lawyer who had joined Twitter’s legal team, for his role in that suppression.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has candidly admitted that the FBI also put pressure on his site to banish any information detrimental to the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign. On Sept. 17, Pamella Geller cited a N.Y. Post article by Miranda Devine which averred that Facebook had actually been reporting the messages of private citizens with “conservative” views to the FBI so that it might then decide if they needed to be silenced!
Recently interviewed by Glenn Beck, now suspended FBI insider Steve Friend said the task force investigating the events of Jan. 6 was basically told beforehand by Washington what conclusions it must reach. Another whistleblower, Kyle Seraphin, has expressed his amazement at the fact that while the vast majority of those who breached the Capitol were unarmed and guilty of no more than trespassing misdemeanors, a concerted attempt has been made by both the Biden government and its media minions to paint them as violent revolutionaries.
That agencies such as the FBI and DOJ have, contrary to American law, been used for political purposes is utterly corrupt. That platforms such as Twitter which purport to be neutral purveyors of information are in fact no such thing, is equally so. Upon learning of that network’s cooperation with the FBI, Tucker Carlson declared it to be guilty of the “largest systematic violation of the First Amendment in modern history.”
Those who hate Trump feel it is okay if not laudable to lie and break the law to keep him out of office. What they do not understand, however, is that in resorting to such tactics they imperil the very Principles upon which our Democracies were founded. One of the recurring themes of this blog has been the contemporary Left’s abandonment of Principles on behalf of Feelings. An adjustment of which our “social justice warriors” are truly proud, it renders most of what they say utterly absurd!
There is much to criticize in Donald Trump. Yet at the same time the Principles for which he stands are largely unassailable. An honest media not consumed by hatred might very well have lauded his attempt to stem the tide of illegal aliens surging across America’s southern border. Instead he was simply denounced as a racist! An honest media might very well have exposed the Democratic Party’s corrupt abuse of the FBI to its own political advantage. Instead it invoked Trump’s egotism to suggest his charges against the Washington “swamp” were just so much petty vindictiveness. But guess what! They were wrong and he was right!
The ratings of news networks such as MSNBC and CNN have declined sharply in recent years, a significant percentage of the public having concluded they are mere organs of Leftist propaganda. Brian Stelter’s own CNN show has of course been cancelled. In his defense he has stated: “It’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue.” But “decency” for him apparently means always voting Democrat while his concept of “dialogue” seems to entail agreeing with most everything he says. Ironically, nothing better illustrates the anti-democratic fascism of the Left than its inanely simplistic response to Donald Trump, a seriously flawed human being who nevertheless represents some perfectly defensible American values.
Chris Licht, the relatively new CEO of CNN, is determined to re-establish the integrity of his network as an honest purveyor of the truth. In a recent interview with the N.Y. Times, he admitted to being appalled by the “uninformed vitriol” emanating “especially from the left.” Seemingly referring to CNN among others, he said: “So much of what passes for news is name-calling, half-truths, and desperation.” His comment would seem to be a perfect description of Brian Stelter’s angry fulminations over the years, though the latter apparently still sees himself as a champion of open, democratic dialogue. One wonders how such simpletons ever acquired their positions of prominence in the mainstream media, though the answer, I would suggest, is fairly obvious to all those of a rational, “conservative” perspective.