Our Majority Main News Media's Hold Back On Trump Finally Called To Task.

[Joe Bauer]

The following article exposes and proposes what I have been posting for months.

Opinion: Why Aren't Editorial Boards Screaming: Trump Has to ...

 

www.editorandpublisher.com › news › opinion-why-ar...

 

1.  

5 days ago - During the investigation and impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, more than 100 newspapers called for him to resign. But President Donald J.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Joe Bauer]

Another irresponsibly too long held back issue with Trump by the majority of our national media is his unprecedented bad treatment of the press.

Specifically members of the White House Press Corps.

It's worse than bad. It is clearly "abuse."

Intimidating, bullying verbal abuse.

I have watched a scowling Trump publicly and personally demean, denigrate, disparage, disrespect, insult with name calling and finger pointing, not just over half our nation's news organizations hundreds of times in his entire time in office but also dozens of individual WH press corp members when he is meeting them in person.

And on such a regular basis this unprecedented street thug bully verbal abuse is almost expected as a normal course of his behavior and manner, even as a President.

I propose that as many WH press corps people who are brave enough, should unite and stage a public walkout in a future press briefing when Trump once again thrust his ugly, mean and insulting name calling verbal abuse toward any of their fellow members, especially when this insulting bully abuse is initiated only because of a question proposed to Trump that he simply doesn't like.

Trump's personal name calling and insults directed at WH press corp members really is classic abuse. Verbal abuse.

And we shouldn't call it anything less.

If one's work place boss, co-worker, customer or even spouse, family member or any other person of authority or in any situation, regularly condescendingly and angrily pointed his or her finger at you while calling you insulting names like "you're a disgrace," " you're nasty," " you're a loser," " you're fake news," you're a failed reporter," "third rate reporter," "terrible reporter," "terrible person," "wise guy," "you ought be ashamed" and on and on and on ...

and in front of others, let alone the entire national viewing audience,

how much of this insulting verbal abuse would or should you take before finally confronting such abuse and demanding it end?

And the News Corporation heads "employers" of these WH press corp members should finally stand up and speak out to defend and protect them from this abuse.

Trump has destroyed the standard tradition ethical and mutually respectful protocols and framework of press corps briefings. Not the other way around.

To such an outrageous degree in my opinion that it's way overdue time now for the press corp victims of Trump's verbal abuse to have their "Network" film moment of righteous indignation and express their commonly shared "I'm as mad as hell and I am not going to take this anymore" sentiments back at him.

Trump loves to bully shock and intimate and insult and put down anyone who he insecurely feels is against him. 

A united walk out by the WH press corps the next time Trump publicly insults and abuses one of their own in a press briefing is probably the only way to stop his abusive and bullying treatment of them.

IMO It's been gut wrenching to see so many press members being humiliated, name called, cut off, bitch slapped really, for years by Trump and to see them and their employers take this abuse without so much as one meek defense editorial or demand for it to stop.

It's time for corporate ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN and others to finally stand up and defend their Trump abused employees.

The article I posted a link to above seems to be the first and only public call for the national media to finally report Trump's failure of leadership in it's full measure as well as other unprecedented abuses of his power including his abuse of members of the press.

 

 

Edited June 2, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Paul Brancato]

Joe - you’re right. But everything seems like a sham these days. I let news filter to me in various ways, but I’m not an avid print media reader. I tune  in to the more ‘liberal’ tv cable stations a bit every day. That’s all I need to do because it’s endless repetition and monothematic. It is striking that a President who is keen, or already has dismantled the limited progress we have made in protecting the environment, the courts, institutions of science and social welfare, etc continues to get away with all of it with scarcely a wimper. There ain’t no courage evident in the press or anywhere else. Opportunities to challenge Trump publicly abound. They happen on a daily basis. Yet nothing happens. Looking at the history of fascism makes you wonder. The Press has gotten hit hard, people have died. Here - nothing. No courage, no idealism. I got no answers.

[James DiEugenio]

Joe:

Point 1:  Trump was already impeached.  It did not work.  And most people knew it was not going to work before it started.  In and of itself, this was a huge difference between Trump and Russia Gate and Nixon and Watergate.  Through the slow but sure accumulation of evidence by the Rodino/Doar committee (much of which was broadcast) and the fact that even the hardliner GOP was eventually convinced by the Smoking Gun tape.  That tape caused Senators Scott and Goldwater to visit Nixon and tell him he would lose in the Senate also.

But Nixon had alienated the press much like Trump has by constantly criticizing them in public and news stories.  People forget how bad.  He wanted the FCC to find an alternative buyer for Graham's Florida TV station. He had guys like Colson going to the heads of the networks like Paley and threatening them if they did not lessen their attacks on Nixon and then he would write up reports for Nixon on this. Nixon himself helmed FIVE meetings at the White House to ensure that the prosecution of Ellsberg  and Russo in the Pentagon Papers case would succeed, so he could show that the media heroes were really traitors. HIs interference in that case knew no bounds so they finally had to throw it out.

People forget how bad Nixon was.   

What really turned the public against Nixon was the Saturday Night Massacre.  That was when NIxon ordered the AG, Eliot Richardson to fire special prosecutor, Archibald Cox.  Richardson resigned rather than do so.  Cox held a midnight press conference saying it would up to the pubic if we had now a rule of law or a rule of men. Nixon then ordered deputy AG Ruckelshaus to fire Cox.  He refused to and resigned. Nixon then went to Solicitor General Bob Bork and asked him to do so.  He complied.

This was October 20, 1973. Impeachment began ten days later.  A day after, the new special prosecutor Leon Jaworksi was appointed. and the judge presiding  over the case  said the attempt to fire Cox was illegal.  It was the reaction to the Saturday Night Massacre that turned the public against Nixon on Watergate.

Joe Lockart does not know his history.

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Caitlin Johnston is masterful in polemic:

That’s why no serious attempt has ever been made to remove Trump from office; he’s been playing nice with existing power structures without challenging them in any meaningful way. Everyone who knew anything was aware that the Mueller collusion would never go anywhere, and anyone who could count Senate seats knew impeachment would fizzle. It was all kayfabe conflict so that Trump’s “opposition” could present the appearance of opposition without interfering in agendas they themselves support or prosecuting crimes of which they themselves are also guilty.

 

It’s also why Obama never had any intention of prosecuting Bush’s heinous war crimes, citing “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”. In reality Obama always understood that in order to play the “president” role (and enjoy its massive perks for the rest of his life), he’d need to collaborate with establishment power structures rather than upsetting them. He knew that if he were to go after Bush he’d ensure his own destruction; under “normal standards” prosecution is the only sane and normal response to war crimes, but in the Mutually Assured Destruction environment of establishment corruption, there are no normal standards.

I point this out because it’s painful to watch people on both sides continually getting their hopes up that the big KABOOM is right around the corner which will finally vindicate their worldview and punish their partisan rivals. It will not happen. Trump will not drain the swamp, and neither will Biden or whatever soulless swamp monster inhabits the White House next. You were lied to. It’s good to be aware of surveillance abuses, mass-scale psyops and media malpractice, but definitely abandon hope that any of this will lead to any major changes in the establishment itself.

If we want real change, it cannot and will not come from either of the two mainstream political factions whose primary job is preventing real change. It’s going to have to come from the people; we’re going to have to find a way to punch through the propaganda brainwashing, wake up to reality, and use the power of our numbers to force the changes which will benefit us past all the oligarchic safeguards that have been placed in front of us to prevent us from doing so.

This is a lot less pleasant than believing some magical hero in a white hat is going to ride in and do all our work for us and all we need to do is relax and “trust the plan.” It’s a lot less comfortable than expunging the fake two-party worldview from our minds which vast fortunes and years of conditioning have gone into manufacturing. But it is reality.

[James DiEugenio]

If you count the read through factor, that is passing it on, I think that might be true.

[W. Niederhut]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Joe:Point 1:  Trump was already impeached.  It did not work.  And most people knew it was not going to work before it started. 

 

Jim,

      The reason that Trump's impeachment "did not work," as you put it, is simple.

      To wit, the Republican Senators, with the notable exception of Mitt Romney, simply refused to do their duty under the Constitution -- based on the ironclad evidence of Trump's guilt in his Ukraine-gate extortion scam.

      In contrast, the Republicans in Congress during the Watergate scandal-- which was 100 times less serious than Trump and Putin's Russia-gate subversion of our democratic elections -- chose duty to the national interest and the Constitution over loyalty to partisan political interests.

     But, please, oblige me.  Neither Jeff, Rob, nor you have answered my basic questions about Russia-gate, which I posted yesterday.

     Do you believe that Russia interfered in our 2016 elections on behalf of Trump?

     Do you acknowledge that Trump and his campaign associates repeatedly lied (or flatly refused to answer questions) about their multiple, undisclosed 2016 contacts with Russian Federation officials, oligarchs, and/or cut outs (e.g., Igor Sechin, Veselnitskaya, Kilimnik, Kisylak, et.al.?)  For the sake of simplifying the argument, let's assume, temporarily, that Mifsud and Assange were not working directly or indirectly for the Kremlin.

      As one example among many, we all know by now that Trump and Michael Cohen lied about Trump's 2016 Moscow Trump Tower negotiations and architectural plans.

     IMO, it's pointless to debate about Russia-gate without a basic consensus regarding the key historical facts in the case.

Edited May 16, 2020 by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

William:

The reason I posted Aaron Mate's filmed interview with Harding was to answer this question you put out there.  Apparently you did not watch it,  which is your privilege of course.

To answer some of your questions, I do not think Moscow and Washington plotted in 2016 to elect Trump,  and in fact no one who appeared before Schiff's committee produced any kind of evidence to that effect. When asked, they all said no, or I was not briefed on it.

Lying about a meeting's agenda to see if someone had emails from HRC, I mean what do you expect them to say?  And why if that was a criminal offense did Mueller not recommend an indictment?  Same with Trump Tower.  These are all extraneous to what the central meme was.  That meme, as set out in the Steele Dossier, was that Trump had been secured by Putin as an agent of the Russians as far back as 1987.  In fact, that point was one which Mate severely questioned Harding on, and it began Harding's backpedaling in the filmed interview you do not want to look at.

I also wonder if you recall just how bad Watergate was.   To say that somehow Russia Gate is worse. . . .really?

1. Embezzling money from the RNC in oder to stage crimes against the DNC by robberies and breaking and entering.

2. Infiltrating members of the Plumbers into the RNC.

3. Collecting hush money from wealthy donors and having Nixon's lawyer hand it off so the captured felons would not talk.

4. Breaking into a psychiatrist's office to secure derogatory information about Ellsberg. (How could you ignore something like that?)

5. Getting the FBI to deep six evidence about the Plumber's actions.

6. Funneling money out of Mexico to finance sabotage operations.

7.  Getting the CIA to lie to the FBI in order to keep those operations from being uncovered.

 

You are going to compare what happened to George P with this stuff?

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Kirk Gallaway]

I've never seen any real accurate discussion about the press on this  forum. I've heard every possible misconception. I'm not sure if Joe was trying to start up another argument about the case for or against Trump's removal though that's what it's become.

I thought the response in Joe's article is accurate. If there the editorial pages started taking up the cause of removing Trump at this late stage it would only be seen as another impeachment try and would backfire. The same Democrats would be involved in prosecuting Trump but now with the aid of the liberal press which the public holds in almost as much contempt as they hold against Congress. How could that possibly be successful? Jim has continually overestimated Trump and  has taken up the cause that any open resistance to Trump would backfire. I completely disagreed with that and I thought going through the Impeachment process with clear knowledge that the Republican majority in the Senate wasn't going to budge at least established that they weren't just going to put up with anything. So they went on record. It didn't hurt them at all. I think it helped.  But if they were to try again with the aid of the liberal press, Jim would at last be right.

  Yes the country is suffering from incompetency of a chief executive during a major crisis as maybe no time in it's history.   All the previous record ''numbers of deaths in all the U.S. wars combined will not add to the number of lives lost soon. Though it wasn't the result of a direct policy from a President but  the slow reaction and blunderous policy mistakes as result of a pandemic.  

  We have about half the country who  under no circumstances will vote for Trump, and a 3/8 bedrock of people who will stick with Trump through anything, and the only thing they will accept to remove Trump from office is to be voted out in an election, and even then there may be problems. but nothing that can't be handled with a clear victory, IMO. Why do you want to incense those people even more with another attempted removal from office?

Joe I think your idea that the press, making a statement and  just walking  out on Trump for his mistreatment, and abdicating their responsibility as the press is a terrible idea. It would be like waving a white flag, when they've won so many  skirmishes with Trump. It's obvious he's responding out of frustration, they only highlight Trump's weakness. And then what? Trump will be held to no public accountability at all!

You really have to think these things through, and incidentally, regarding that silly article,  whatever anyone thinks about prosecuting Bush for the Iraq War, having the first order of business when  Obama came into office to  prosecute Bush for the war is just another divisive page from  the Banana Republics. It would have been so ill timed, politically nobody was thinking about that, and would have done no good at all. The real and most immediate test of Obama where he could have achieved some greatness involved standing up to the banks. Period! And he didn't.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[Paul Brancato]

Apparently bee colonies have figured out how to defend themselves against the hornets - by raising the temperature of the hive. 

[W. Niederhut]

14 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

William:

To answer some of your questions, I do not think Moscow and Washington plotted in 2016 to elect Trump,  and in fact no one who appeared before Schiff's committee produced any kind of evidence to that effect. When asked, they all said no, or I was not briefed on it.

 

Jim,

       The House Intelligence Committee never conducted hearings on the Mueller Report, even after Schiff became Chairman in 2019-- partly because Congress has, to date, never been allowed to see the full Mueller Report!   Bill Barr has been fighting tooth-and-claw to block Congress from getting the Report, and the Trump/Barr DOJ has just appealed to the SCOTUS this month to block the release of the Mueller Report to Congress.

       Prior to 2019, the Committee was controlled by Devin Nunes (R-California) and Mike Conaway (R-Texas) who explicitly announced in March of 2018 that the GOP controlled Committee did not investigate, or find, evidence of "collusion."  They looked for none, and found none. Shocker.

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/379005-house-intel-republican-panel-did-not-investigate-collusion

"Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) said Sunday the House Intelligence Committee was not tasked with investigating collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, despite the committee issuing a report last week stating it found no evidence of collusion in the 2016 election.

“Our committee was not charged with answering the collusion idea,” Conaway said on NBC's “Meet The Press.” 

As for the Mueller investigation, it found evidence of systematic, sweeping interference in our 2016 U.S. elections by Russia. *

Although Mueller did not use the word "collusion" in his Report, he found evidence of extensive contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians affiliated with the Kremlin and/or Putin's oligarchs. *

The most notable case of apparent "collusion" involved 2016 contacts between Trump's Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and his close associate Konstantin Kilimnik, a known Russian military intelligence (GRU) asset.   Kilimnik dodged the Mueller investigation with the able assistance of Lutsenko, and Manafort repeatedly lied during the investigation -- even after agreeing to cooperate with Mueller in a plea bargain!

Under the circumstances, Mueller explicitly declined to exonerate Trump. *  His investigation was repeatedly obstructed by Trump -- including Trump's refusal to answer key questions about his contacts with Russia, and the floating of pardons to Manafort and others under investigation.*

*  Key Findings from the Mueller Report

www.acslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/ACS-CREW-Final-Mueller-Report-Highlights.7.19.pdf

Edited May 16, 2020 by W. Niederhut

[Cliff Varnell]

16 minutes ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Not to criticize Joe, but this looks like another one of those threads where Niederhut and Ness throw sh*t against the wall and regurgitate the talking points fed to them by interest groups and franchises that are in the process of being 

Ah. So that’s what they call a Fascist Purge these days.

Trump is trying to gain control of the postal service in order to deep-six mail-in ballots from blue precincts in swing states.

A fan of one man rule likes that idea, right, Robert?

[Cliff Varnell]

Just now, Robert Wheeler said:

I thought it was to destroy the Amazon franchise by removing the subsidies the Post Office gives them. 
 

I like your idea too.

Two birds Mr. Trump. Well played.

That’s Reichsfurher Trump to you, sir.

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Not to criticize Joe, but this looks like another one of those threads where Niederhut and Ness throw sh*t against the wall and regurgitate the talking points fed to them by interest groups...

I've observed a lot of "projection" in my psychiatric career, but this comment takes the proverbial cake...

To be clear, I had just posted a precise response to Jim's post about the history of the House Intelligence Committee's "investigation" of Russiagate "collusion," with two references-- from Congressman Conaway and the Mueller Report.

Far from comprising common "talking points," these important historical references have largely been lost in the deluge of Fox Trumpaganda claiming that Russiagate was a "hoax," and the Mueller Report, a "dud."

Then, all too predictably, Wheeler disrupts another rational debate to throw  excrement on the forum wall-- not relevant data or topical rebuttals, but excrement.

This kind of deflective and ad hominem thread hijacking makes it very difficult to carry on rational debates about history and current events.

Meanwhile, we were discussing the facts about the House Intel Committee's non-investigation of Russiagate, and Paul Manafort's favorite GRU asset, Konstantin Kilimnik.

 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Robert Wheeler said:

I'm just saying that we have more than one of these threads going. The 56 year one for example, or the Mark Zaid one on the less used forum. 

Someone is inevitably going to say, "how is this JFK related?" 

I don't think its a good idea to high-jack the whole forum with several non-JFK related threads.

As for rational debate W. Neiderhut or the other W. Neiderhut, you and I both know you are not here to debate, rational or otherwise.

Oh, I see, Rob.

Your reason for hijacking this thread was simply to keep the forum well-focused on relevant topics, and to prevent forum "hijacking."

Thanks for clarifying.  🙄