How the press rewards Trump for his endless, obvious lies
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
On Friday, 19 days after Donald Trump told Fox News that he’d be signing “a full and complete healthcare plan” in two weeks’ time, he announced that, “over the next two weeks,” he would “be pursuing a major executive order requiring health insurance companies to cover all pre-existing conditions for all customers.” That isn’t within his authority to do without an act of Congress. But as you probably know, the Affordable Care Act, which Trump’s currently urging the Supreme Court to throw out in its entirety, already bars insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.
In all likelihood, Trump’s new “order” will never materialize. But if he does issue one, the insurance industry won’t challenge it in court because it’s already against the law to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. They wouldn’t even have standing to challenge it because they wouldn’t be able to show that they would be impacted by it.
You probably know all of this, but most Americans don’t follow policy debates very closely. And this is how CBS News’ White House Correspondent reported the news to his 353,000 Twitter followers:
Over next two weeks, Pres Trump says he’ll be working on “a major Executive Order,” requiring health insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions “for all of its customers.” pic.twitter.com/32uNYFqvi1
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 7, 2020
Pres says he thinks he can sign the Executive Order relief measures “by the end of the week.” He says WH lawyers are currently working on the orders. He’s confident he’s got the authority to issue the orders, but “probably we’ll get sued,” he says.
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) August 8, 2020
Through July 9, Trump had told 20,055 lies in 1,267 days in office, according to The Washington Post’s database ( WaPo calls them “false or misleading claims”).
Many of these claims, no matter how outlandish, have been dutifully amplified by reporters before amounting to nothing. (Just this week, The Daily Beast described Trump’s chimeric, unenforceable “phase one” trade agreement with China as something “Trump has considered a crowning, legacy-defining process of his first term in office.” And this was in a story about how it’s currently unraveling.)
Trump just needs the headlines for his campaign, and even after four years of consistently obvious mendacity, he gets them over and over again.
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The press has helped Trump immeasurably over the years.
If by "immeasurably" you mean "so little, you need an electron microscope to measure it" then I agree with you.
The media say Trump is not nice.
That's hardly adequate. The media should be saying that Trump is a would-be Mussolini, and so on...
By constantly under-evaluating Trump's awfulness, they do him great service.
Lol yeah, the mass media is in Trumps court ......
The CBS News’ White House Correspondent reported Trump's blabberings as if they were actual news. Trump has no intention of producing an actual health care plan at this point.
Just about all the senior pundits say the same thing: there is no symmetry, both-sides-ism is wrong.
And yet... the media continue to treat the White House with deference. Both-sides-ism rules.
The media's incompetence during the run-up to the 2016 election gave Trump the win... and I see no improvement since then.
Based on what, I wonder, do you think that? Multiple studies have shown that news coverage of Trump is pretty consistently 90% negative.
The media are far too timid. It is long since past time to be using terms like "neo-fascist".
On a scale that goes from -20 (very negative, harsh vocabulary) to +20 (very positive, vocabulary dithyrambique), the media are perhaps at -3 or -4. So yes, tbe media are negative, but nowhere near negative enough.
The Republic is in danger. The media do not communicate that urgency.
It’s pretty comical. Depending on the time of day, the pendulum swings from Calling him a neo fascist to. attacking him for not ceasing control of the government and shutting down businesses and ordering everyone to wear masks at all times.
I agree but likely for few of the same reasons.
A very interesting dichotomy I’d say.
Maybe because there is no need for urgency. He has been president for 3 1/2 years. He has had ample time to go full-dictator and it hasn't happened. The Republic seems ok.
The media should be reporting the Trump Administration’s program to transform America's democracy into a patriarchal plutocracy.
Anything less is rendering service to Trump.
Well, if that were true, then it can be assured the media would certainly do that, however, not a peep from them.
Maybe because that thought is BS, and even the leftist media know it?
The MSM didn’t even cover Biden saying blacks have no diversity of thought until it became a major story on alternative sites and Biden apologized.
you are not dumb John. How can you even suggest the media is, in any way, not 100% in the tank for Biden and skewing it’s coverage in his favor?
Donald Trump has never, for one minute, been fit to hold elective office in the USA. Yet the media rarely if ever says this outside of "partisan" opinion shows and columns. The media has been deferential to Trump even as he has lied to the American people 20,000 times WHILE IN OFFICE. It has always been an Alice-In-Wonderland type situation.
The media cannot get away from both-sides-ism.
They cannot accept the idea that one of America's two primary political parties is working industriously to subvert the nation.
They cannot accept the idea that one of America's two primary political parties intends to replace our republic based on the rule of law, with a patriarchal plutocracy based on the absolute authority of a Great Leader.
Donald Trump has made significant "progress" toward the elimination of "the rule of law". His casual disregard for the law is an important step toward the Patriarchate.