The Bulldog Barks
Back in April of last year, NBC pundit Andrea Mitchell said: "I have never seen anything like this, where people just flat-out lie." She was referring to our #PoserPrez and others in his administration. (I'm blogging about this now, because I only saw the article about two weeks ago.)
What Mitchell had to say in the article about Trumpers lying constantly is certainly true. But it's also true that her frequent and careless criticism of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while SoS contributed in no small way to tRump's victory.
She was in that elite group of talking heads who screamed long and loud about the emails and implied repeatedly--and in some cases, said explicitly--that Hillary was not worthy of the trust of the American people.
Just for background, here's a link to a story from 2015 about how Mitchell aggressively hounded Hillary while on the campaign trail and made no apologies for it.
And for anyone who won't buy my contention that Mitchell's coverage in the 2016 election went too far, here's a link to a story where Mitchell herself acknowledges that it did.
So how did all that turn out?
Well, you know as well as I do that we were saddled with this vicious, thuggish con man who spends all his time doing three things:
The first is formulating a new executive order to undo everything Barack Obama ever did, no matter who it hurts. Or how many Americans are harmed by it.
The second is watching cable news to see who's dissing him, then tweeting about it. The tweeting part usually comes between 3 and 6 in the frickin' morning.
And the third thing this accursed #PoserPrez does is fly to Mar-a-Lago *on our dime* and play golf with America's true elites, the uber-rich who are so tickled that tRump--their boi--is handing them every last thing on their wish list even though most of those things are 180° opposed to the interests of ordinary Americans who work for a living.
#MangoMussolini has viciously criticized just about every one who doesn't share his extreme right-wing, alt-right views and everyone and anything associated with Barack Obama, but has never criticized--and NEVER WILL criticize--three people or things: Neo-Nazis/white supremacists, the NRA and his big man-crush, Vladimir Putin.
That's who became president after the 2016 election because people like Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer and Andrea Mitchell mouthed right-wing talking points about how bad and untrustworthy Hillary Clinton was over and over and over again until her unfavorability rating was almost as low as tRump's. That's a travesty! A travesty and a joke!
Using a private email server should be a crime? It's a scandal? It makes a former SoS unfit to be President? Well Repug Secs of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice used private, not-government email servers too! Yeah, no "scandals" and no investigations there! Hmmm...
But a petty, vengeful, serial-lying con man and reality show host who's been through three marriages and four bankruptcies, and been sued over his debts and dirty deals over three thousand times--literally, over three thousand times--is somehow more fit to be Commander-in-Chief! Really!?
It's impossible to say if the election would have ended differently if Andrea Mitchell and the other Hill Haters in the MSM would not have gone "all email, all the time" in the run-up to the election, but their constant beating of that busted drum carried a LOT of weight. And Mitchell's frequent snide and disparaging remarks and reports about HRC may well have swayed more people than any other pundit in the two years leading up to that disaster on Nov 9th of 2016.
Here's a link to an article where Mitchell actually said that she and others in the MSM were "harassing" Hillary about her emails in the summer of 2015. That came in a podcast by the folks at Politico.
It's really frustrating now after a year of #BenedictDonald to see Mitchell pointing out the obvious as far as his constant lying--even though it's 100% true--when her mean-spirited, slanted coverage of the Hillary email story is one of the reasons that this treasonous, duplicitous con man got into the position where he could do all this outrageous stuff in the first place!
Oh, isn't irony ironic?!
Bulldog Ben Basile
One other thought: I hasten to add that I'm NOT saying that Mitchell or other pundits should remain silent about tRump's treachery and lies now if they weren't singing that hymn throughout the election. That would serve no purpose. But all of this is so frustrating for those of us who were jumping up and down and screaming at the tops of our voices that tRump was a dangerous con man whose venality, pettiness and incompetence could literally tear America to pieces!
And while all this was going on in the last few months before election day, Mitchell and others in the media couldn't escape their contrived narratives of false equivalences. It sucked BIG time and it still sticks in my craw!
© 2018 Benjamin Lawrence Basile
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