Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Wire,
How do they get away with it?
Even with the 1000’s of different media sources obtainable at this time – Web, podcasts, social media – the legacy media picks a story and repeats it so typically that the common citizen could nicely settle for it as true.
Now, if the subject material is one thing inane just like the significance of a Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce romance, we are able to all play alongside and, nicely, no hurt, no foul. However when the aim is character assassination of a candidate for president, it’s harmful to be unaware of the falsity of what the mainstream media is promoting.
I do know I sound like a damaged document, however each week one thing extra egregious presents itself. For the final two weeks, it has been the false narrative that Donald Trump praised the terrorist group Hezbollah for being “very good.” On each information present each hour for a minimum of per week, one of many visitors or anchors would let you know this as if it disqualified Trump to be president.
So, as soon as once more, I’ve to ask, “What did Trump actually say?”
It’s not laborious to seek out out. Video exists of the Oct. 11 speech in West Palm Seashore, Fla., and sure, Trump did say that Hezbollah is “very good” however not as a praise. Moderately, he was saying that it was silly for Israel, President Biden, or anybody else to underestimate this brutal foe.
Two nights in the past, I learn all of Biden’s safety folks… nationwide protection folks, and so they mentioned ‘Gee I hope Hezbollah doesn’t assault from the north as a result of that’s essentially the most weak spot.’ I mentioned wait a minute. Hezbollah’s very good. They’re all very good. The press doesn’t prefer it after I say it although. …
However Hezbollah, they’re very good, and so they have a nationwide protection minister or someone saying I hope Hezbollah doesn’t assault us from the north, so the next morning they assault. They won’t have been doing it, however if you happen to hearken to this jerk, you’ll assault from the north as a result of he mentioned that’s our weak spot. Whoever heard of officers saying on tv that they hope our enemy doesn’t assault in a sure space?
In his speech, Trump paused to recall how the press had attacked him beforehand when he mentioned that President Xi of China “is a really good man.” As Trump mentioned, “They killed me the following day,” and that’s what occurred after Trump’s Florida speech as nicely.
From that day ahead, the press handed alongside the Hezbollah anecdote in a truncated kind that had no context and no legitimacy as information however solely as propaganda. All they instructed their readers or viewers was this: “Trump mentioned Hezbollah is ‘very good.’” In different phrases, Trump is harmful and disreputable and a terror sympathizer who shouldn’t be commander in chief.
It’s dangerous sufficient when it’s mentioned in an echo chamber like MSNBC that’s afraid to ask conservatives on their exhibits, due to course their total viewers hates Trump and can by no means vote for him anyway. However what about Fox Information? Why is it that you simply just about by no means heard anybody on so-called conservative Fox push again in opposition to the narrative and clarify that Trump mentioned Hezbollah is “very good” solely within the restricted context of the terrorist group responding with missiles from the north when Israel mentioned it was frightened about missiles coming from the north.
I feel the gist of what Trump mentioned boils right down to this: “In case you assume your enemy is silly, if you happen to insist on underestimating your enemy, then you don’t have any one guilty however your self when the enemy does what you dared them to not do.” That goes for Hitler in World Battle II, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They ain’t silly, however that doesn’t imply they’re ethical. Acknowledging your enemies’ strategic strengths doesn’t imply you’re praising their ethical character, any greater than you’re praising Devil if you admit that he outsmarted Adam and Eve.
Talking of Fox Information, there was a noticeable shift away from Donald Trump in its information protection in current months. No shock when one in every of their board members, former Home speaker Paul Ryan, is a vehement and outspoken By no means Trumper. Most recently it seems to be just like the community has been attempting to advertise the presidential candidacy of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has been one in every of Trump’s most vocal critics on the marketing campaign path.
Haley has additionally been attacking fellow candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and Sean Hannity seized on her phrases to attempt to ambush Ramaswamy in an interview following the savage Hamas assault on Israel. This resulted in one of many strangest moments in tv historical past when Hannity steered that Ramaswamy was not certified to be president due to his lack of political expertise.
“I feel people who by no means held public workplace such as you,” Hannity mentioned to Ramaswamy, “perhaps they are not certified to be president.”
Anybody with a scintilla of consciousness will discover Hannity’s lack of self-awareness astonishing. For years, Hannity was a cheerleader for Trump, who based mostly his total candidacy in 2016 on the truth that he wasn’t a politician. But right here was Hannity unabashedly siding with the swamp creatures in opposition to the outsider who says he needs to shift the political paradigm away from business-as-usual.
Ramaswamy, the one America First candidate working within the GOP main moreover Trump, could have provoked Hannity by giving an interview to former top-rated Fox Information host Tucker Carlson a couple of days earlier. That interview on X (previously Twitter) adopted shortly after the Hamas assault on Israel, and Carlson launched Ramaswamy by displaying a clip of Haley saying that the assault on Israel was additionally “an assault on America” and suggesting that Israel ought to “end” not simply Hamas but additionally Iran, a nation of 86 million folks which can or could not have a nuclear weapon.
That gave Ramaswamy a gap to criticize Haley as somebody who was “ready to get wealthier from battle, what with a army contracting enterprise and in any other case.”
Though this matter holds no obvious curiosity for Sean Hannity, it’s a matter of undeniable fact that the candidate’s husband Michael Haley is a companion in Allied Protection LLC, a South Carolina firm tied to army contractors. Day by day Beast did an investigative piece that checked out Nikki Haley’s monetary disclosures and located that Allied Protection and the Haleys “may gain advantage financially from state and federal coverage, together with from the export of army gear to Taiwan.”
But when Hannity interviewed Ramaswamy on Oct. 12, he began with a clip of Haley remarking that Ramaswamy says “everyone is purchased and paid for with no proof in any respect.” Maybe that’s too sturdy, however “no proof in any respect” is a questionable description for a candidate with monetary connections to Boeing, the place she beforehand served on the board; receives help from the SFA Fund, a Tremendous PAC selling Haley’s aggressive stance in opposition to Communist China; and whose husband’s firm stands to learn if Taiwan is attacked.
Hannity was tired of any of that. As an alternative he attacked Ramaswamy for daring to query Haley in his Oct. 9 interview with Carlson. “What you’re doing right here is saying about Nikki Haley, you are saying that her concern for Israel is pushed by monetary and a corrupting affect,” Hannity mentioned. “Your quote, ‘There are frankly monetary and corrupting influences that make them communicate the way in which they do.’”
If viewers have been in a position to hear Ramaswamy’s solutions – Hannity saved speaking over him – they’d have discovered that the quote about “monetary and corrupting influences” was a reference to why politicians single out some conflicts just like the Ukraine battle and the Israeli battle and ignore different wars which are simply as barbaric, lethal, and heart-breaking.
Right here’s what Ramaswamy instructed Tucker Carlson:
Take a look at what’s taking place with Azerbaijan and Armenia. You don’t actually hear a lot about that now. Why?… What’s taking place is an atrocity. I imply, you may have people who find themselves Armenians, principally Christian, six-figure numbers – 100,000, 120,000 – being pushed again to their nation from a area that has lengthy been a spot they’ve referred to as house, a number of atrocities that aren’t even but coming to mild in Western media. However Azerbaijan has a foyer, a strong foyer, in Washington, D.C., and I feel a giant a part of what’s fallacious in america at this time … is you may have a system that’s purchased and paid for. … It’s fallacious what occurred in Israel … however the selective nature of ignoring sure different conflicts or much more importantly ignoring the pursuits of the U.S. proper right here at house, is what irritates the heck out of me, out of the politicians in each events, and it’s shameful. and I feel that there are frankly monetary and corrupting influences that lead them precisely to talk the way in which they do.”
So there may be the precise context of Ramaswamy’s grievance about “monetary and corrupting influences,” and as you may see it has nothing to do with ethical outrage over the assault on Israel.
In line with Hannity, nonetheless, Haley may do no fallacious, and Ramaswamy may do no proper, particularly when it got here to his warnings in opposition to permitting the protection trade to name the photographs on our nationwide safety posture.
“You’re saying that if someone works for a protection contractor, that that may be a monetary corrupting place when nationwide safety and protection is vital to the reason for freedom and has been all through human historical past?”
Maintain on, Hannity! Did you actually simply criticize a Republican candidate for president as a result of he’s warning in opposition to permitting those that will profit from battle to make selections about battle? Maybe you may have forgotten the sooner warning of President Dwight Eisenhower, who in his farewell deal with to the nation in 1961, mentioned: “Within the councils of presidency, we should guard in opposition to the acquisition of unwarranted affect, whether or not sought or unsought, by the military-industrial advanced. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced energy exists and can persist. We must not ever let the burden of this mix endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should always take nothing as a right.”
Perhaps Hannity isn’t as good as he thinks he’s. I’ll take the 2 presidents he implicitly criticized – Trump and Eisenhower – over his bullying histrionics any day of the week. And I’ll proceed sounding the alarm each time information retailers – whether or not on the left or proper – promote an agenda fairly than doing their job of informing the general public with out worry or favor.
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