This site requires Javascript to function properly - please enable Javascript in your browser

The Media Is Pushing To Normalize Donald Trump

John Russell » Groups » NEWSMucks » Discussions » The Media Is Pushing To Normalize Donald Trump

By: John Russell • 3 years ago • 16 comments

The Media Is Pushing To Normalize Donald Trump

What do you think the chances are that the CNN host will tell Trump to his face that he tried to steal the election and egged on an insurrection at the nation's capitol building? I'd say slim to none.

Leave a comment to auto-join group NEWSMucks

item : CNN to conduct Donald Trump "town hall" on May 10th.

There is a lot of "debate" about whether CNN, or any respectable news outlet, should be giving Donald Trump a platform and forum to spread his lies and traitorous thoughts. What do you think the chances are that the CNN host will tell Trump to his face that he tried to steal the election and egged on an insurrection at the nation's capitol building? I'd say slim to none. Kid glove treatment may even be written into the agreement for Trump to appear.

To say this is inexplicable is putting it mildly.

item: the push for a third party could get Trump elected

related

thehill.com /opinion/campaign/3983949-could-2024-be-the-year-a-third-party-candidate-finally-breaks-through/

Could 2024 be the year a third-party candidate finally breaks through?

Bernard Goldberg, Opinion Contributor 5-7 minutes 5/3/2023

What if we asked a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence program to analyze all Americans eligible to be president and come up with the names of everyone who has the characteristics required for someone in that important job — things like character, competence, integrity and common sense.

Raise your hand if you think the names “Joe Biden” or “Donald Trump” would show up in the top million names the AI program would spit out. Besides Biden, Trump and maybe members of their immediate families, I’m guessing not a lot of hands would go up.

But here we are. Almost nobody wants Joe Biden to run again, and yet he is running, and with only token opposition from within his party. And just about nobody outside the MAGA right wants Donald Trump to run again, either, and yet he’s (at least for now) light years ahead of his nearest likely opponent, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.).

How is this good for the country? Short answer: It isn’t. One man would be 86 at the end of his second term — and if you think he’s not mentally up to the job now, you can’t believe he’s going to get sharper as he gets older. As for the other man, he was the first American president who tried to stay in office even after he lost — and who arguably instigated the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by telling his most loyal fans that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election right out from under him.

And this time around voters are going to have to decide if they really want to vote for Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris waiting in the wings in case the president doesn’t make it all the way through a second term. You think he’s unpopular? Americans think even less of her . Can you think of anything pertinent Harris has said since she’s been in office? How about something coherent on matters of policy? What she’s best known for is that laugh, which pops up at all sorts of odd times.

If she’s on the ticket, voters will think twice before voting for Biden, especially if he’s running against a Republican not named Donald Trump, someone younger and more mentally fit than Biden, who would be 82 on Election Day.

But even if he gets lucky and runs against the man he beat in 2020, he could still face an uphill battle. What if Trump picks Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) as his running mate? Or former ambassador Nikki Haley? They likely would appeal to the same moderate voters who don’t like Trump’s brashness but may hold their nose and vote for him anyway.

And Peggy Noonan makes a good point in her recent Wall Street Journal column about how nobody really wants to see a re-run of the 2020 presidential election. “If it starts to seem clear that America is once again locked into a Trump-Biden race,” she writes , “I think the electorate is going to get frisky. I don’t see people just accepting it. I see pushback and little rebellions.”

Pushback is already coming from Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who the polls tell us has 19 percent support among Democratic voters. I’m not suggesting he’s going to be the nominee, but he might cause Joe Biden some trouble. If Biden refuses to take part in a presidential debate, Kennedy likely will ask, “What’s he afraid of?” And that may get voters asking the same question.

As for third-party candidates — historically they don’t do well, but given the choice between Trump and Biden, a third-party candidate might emerge, especially since independents now outnumber members of each party.

A February Gallup poll found that while 28 percent of Americans identified as Democrats, and 27percent as Republicans, 44 percent said they are independents. And a March Harvard-Harris poll found that 53 percent of Americans would consider voting for an independent moderate presidential candidate over either Biden or Trump.

Which brings us to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat in a ruby red state. According to Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen, “A recent poll taken for Senate Republicans shows Manchin trailing his most likely challenger, termed-out Republican Gov. Jim Justice, by 10 points. If Justice gets into the race, Manchin’s hopes for reelection are slim to none.” Since that was written, Justice has gotten into the race, which led Olsen to conclude that, “That’s one reason Manchin might run for president as an independent. He’s got nowhere to go in his home state.”

Is a third-party candidate (Manchin or anyone else) likely? Maybe not. But given a choice between Biden and Trump, it’s not out of the question this time around.
You never know what kind of “little rebellions” those “frisky” voters may have in mind — to avoid a rematch of the 2020 race.

The author of this junk is a Fox News insider named Bernard Goldberg, a right winger who was a regular on Bill O' Reilly's old show. He wants Trump to win, but couches it in a "sincere" belief that neither Biden or Trump should be running. This is nothing but back door bothsidesism.

The political pundit A.B Stoddard was on Charlie Sykes podcast yesterday , and as a "never trumper" she is very worried that Trump will win the election. Why? Because the media will allow a narrative to develop that Biden and Trump are equally unqualified to be president, albeit for different reasons, and according to Stoddard, people who dont pay a lot of attention to politics could decide that given a choice of two bad candidates why not go with the guy who had "the greatest economy ever" ? (not true).

These things could and maybe will happen if Trump is allowed to be "normalized", and we see this occurring bit by bit all the time now.

The national media has not learned the lesson of 2016. Not even close.

Tags

[]

Professor Principal

1 author JohnRussell 3 years ago

We are slowly headed towards another election disaster like 2016.

Professor Principal

2 Sean Treacy 3 years ago

Same thIng the joe scarboughs of the world did in 2015/2016. This is season 2. Push trump to win the nomination and then discover he’s the worst person ever once that’s secure. The cnns, Lincoln projects etc are focused on attacking desantis and any other Republican who threatens trump.

Professor Principal

2.1 author JohnRussell replied to Sean Treacy @2 3 years ago

Get Trump to drop out in shame, and then you will have a point. People who do not even lift a little finger on a discussion forum to dis him cut no mustard with me.

Professor Principal

4 author JohnRussell 3 years ago

thehill.com /homenews/campaign/3984668-the-memo-cnns-trump-town-hall-reignites-debate-over-media-coverage/
The Memo: CNN’s Trump town hall reignites debate over media coverage

Niall Stanage 6-7 minutes 5/3/2023

CNN’s decision to host a town hall with former President Trump has sparked fresh controversy around media coverage of the former president.
The network, which had a mutually antagonistic relationship with Trump during his time in the White House, will host a New Hampshire town hall in prime time next Wednesday. CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins will moderate.

CNN came under fire almost as soon as the news of the event broke.

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tweeted on Monday that CNN was “giving a live primetime platform to an indicted insurrection-inciter, who also incited violence against their network.”

Hasan added that he had been asked many times whether the media had “learned lessons” from 2016 and 2020, and that CNN’s decision indicated to him that “clearly some in our media have not.”

Liberal activists were equally condemnatory of the decision.

Shaunna Thomas, the co-founder and executive director of UltraViolet, a pro-gender equality organization, called Trump “a flagrant misogynist” and “insurrectionist” to whom CNN was about to give “free airtime and an unfettered platform to spew lies and hate.”

Her organization is calling on the network to cancel the event.

Angelo Carusone, president of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, called the proposed event “at least a little odious” and a “transparent attempt to goose their ratings.”

David Kurtz, executive editor of the left-leaning media outlet Talking Points Memo, wrote that CNN choosing to do a town hall event rather than a one-on-one interview “enables Trump and those like him free rein to spew misinformation, falsehoods, and half-truths unhindered by any mediating journalistic considerations.”

On social media, there was plenty along the same lines.

The contours of the debate are familiar from Trump’s original run for the presidency and the years that followed.

The early stages of Trump’s first presidential run, which he launched in mid-2015, were granted enormous media attention.

Critics on the left contended this was one of the major factors that enabled the then-candidate to leapfrog other, more established rivals on his path to the GOP nomination.

While Trump was president, CNN in particular often seemed to adopt an openly adversarial tone — something which boosted ratings, riled conservatives and arguably damaged CNN’s brand.

Chris Licht, who took over as CNN’s chairman and CEO last year, is widely perceived to be seeking to shift the network onto a less partisan footing.

Still, the debate around appropriate coverage of Trump is given added edge in the wake of his fictional claims of election fraud in 2020, his conduct in and around Jan. 6, 2021, his recent criminal indictment in Manhattan and the ongoing trial centered upon E. Jean Carroll’s accusation that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s.

Does the CNN town hall give a platform to a public figure who is uniquely prone to misinformation and inflammatory language, as its critics claim?

Or, as its defenders could argue, is it absurd to suggest that any mainstream organization can ignore a figure like Trump who, these days, is the clear frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 nomination?

Those in the middle say they appreciate the complexity of the situation.

“It’s too easy to say Trump got elected because the networks gave him so much airtime,” David Greenberg, a Rutgers University professor of history, and of journalism and media studies, told this column. “Simply putting someone on the screen doesn’t magically make them president.”

But Greenberg, who is also the author of a book, “Republic of Spin,” dealing with the presidency, media and communications, added that it was nonetheless important for CNN to retain a sense of proportion in its Trump coverage.

“It is naive to expect that mainstream media will just boycott Trump. And even if they could be pressured into doing so, I’m not sure that would be the right thing to do. You don’t want to boycott Trump but you don’t want to give him a platform disproportionate to the other candidates.”

CNN has so far offered only standard, broad descriptions of the nature of the town hall event, asserting that it is part of a “longstanding tradition of hosting leading presidential candidates,” and that such events are “a critical component of the network’s robust campaign coverage.”

There will clearly be enormous focus on what the network does to push back against any factually untrue comments made by Trump.

Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, said he would be “stunned” if CNN did not offer significant fact-checking of Trump, whether in a dedicated segment, in a post-town hall panel discussion or from Collins herself.

But Reeher also defended the nature of the event.

Trump “is a former president. He is, whether we like it or not, a legitimate candidate for the nomination. So I think it is entirely appropriate to host a town hall,” he said.

Reeher also argued vigorously that it would be an equally serious dereliction of duty if CNN or any other network bowed to the demands of activist groups and de-platformed such a central political figure.

“Some of the networks, during some periods in the last eight years, have dropped their impartiality, but that would be another level,” he said, adding it would amount to the media taking “a giant step over the line.”

The hubbub is sure to continue right up until the event itself, and perhaps beyond it.

The controversy, by its nature, is also likely to boost ratings.
Those big ratings are, as ever, the one goal that Trump and CNN are chasing together.

Professor Principal

5 Hallux 3 years ago

Have not watched CNN for nigh on 20 years. I might just tune in to watch Trump once again be his own worst enemy.

Professor Silent

5.1 bbl-1 replied to Hallux @5 3 years ago

So, what do you watch?

Professor Principal

6 author JohnRussell 3 years ago

My questions for Donald Trump at his CNN town hall

"What were you doing during the 3 hours the capitol riot was occurring and you were seen doing nothing but watching television all that time?

How many times prior to Jan 6th were you told your by lawyers and advisors that you had lost the election?

Why are you trying to scare Americans by talking about "nuclear" so much?

"Why did you hug a Q Anon advocate who was convicted of unlawful conduct on Jan 6, and has publicly called for the death of your vice president?

Are you embarrassed that you mistook a photo of your alleged rape victim for a photo of your second wife, considering that you said the alleged victim was "not my type", and now your words will be used against you at your trial ?

Why would you say you will continue to campaign for president even if you are convicted of a crime? Would that be a good example for our young people?

and many more

Professor Principal

7 JBB 3 years ago

Ha Ha Ha! Normalize? Nope! Get Outta Here! LMAO

original

Professor Principal

8 author JohnRussell 3 years ago

This is from a Wall St Journal article today

Again, the Fed bears responsibility, but Democrats in Congress and the administration have refused to take inflation seriously. The promotion of spending without regard to fiscal and financial consequences entrenched price pressures throughout the economy. We now face a crucial period in which either real wages will have to retreat further to help get inflation down, or interest rates will need to go even higher.
Democrats think they can avoid accountability for all these economic errors by making the terms of political debate about threats to "democracy." But this record of dismal financial and economic management makes me skeptical of the widely touted idea that Donald Trump can't win next year.

The Trump calculation has always been that voters will accept the evident flaws in the man's character and behavior as the price for turning out a party that is literally impoverishing them. The Democrats have to hope the national conversation never gets back to economics.
https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=4df215a2c4517c16JmltdHM9MTY4MzA3MjAwMCZpZ3VpZD0xNTYxODFmYS0wYzAxLTY2NDgtM2UyMS05MmZjMGQ3ZjY3ZjgmaW5zaWQ9NTE3Nw&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=156181fa-0c01-6648-3e21-92fc0d7f67f8&psq=Free+Expression%3a+Trump+Could+Win+if+People+Vote+Their+Pocketbooks&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud3NqLmNvbS9hcnRpY2xlcy90cnVtcC1jb3VsZC13aW4taWYtcGVvcGxlLXZvdGUtdGhlaXItcG9ja2V0Ym9va3MtYmlkZW4tZmVkLWJhbmtpbmctaW5mbGF0aW9uLWQzYzg2NzE2&ntb=1

The Wall St Journal is mainstream media. Here is an article about Trump becoming president that does not even mention he is being investigated for numerous crimes , hugs domestic terrorists, and regularly makes statements that make him sound insane.

All he has , according to the Wall St Journal, are "evident flaws" that can be accepted by the voters.

By the way, this article, from a conservative republican leaning source, does not even mention Ron DeSantis once.

Professor Silent

9 bbl-1 3 years ago

A Trump town hall could be interesting. I applaud CNN for doing it. Any exposure of any candidate in any venue that is not a campaign rally can be revealing. Just wait for the question that hasn't been asked yet and see the response. The 'Sword of Damocles' can appear at the most unexpected time and that sword can be sharp.

Professor Quiet

10 pat wilson 3 years ago

60 Minutes giving a platform to MTG and now CNN chasing the ratings are really disappointing to me.

Professor Silent

10.1 bbl-1 replied to pat wilson @10 3 years ago

Voted you up although I disagree. It is best to show people in their varnished and unvarnished light.

To quote Vito Corleone, "Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer." You have to know who and what these people are.

Professor Expert

11 Gsquared 3 years ago

Nothing in the world could possibly "normalize" Trump. Nothing.

Professor Quiet

12 Jack_TX 3 years ago

Is a third-party candidate (Manchin or anyone else) likely? Maybe not. But given a choice between Biden and Trump, it’s not out of the question this time around.

I'd vote for Manchin

Professor Principal

13 JBB 3 years ago

original

You must be logged in to post a comment

Who is online

387 visitors