Desperate times call for desperate measures, the saying goes, but since the Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump contest of 2015 – 2016, the desperate measures that Democrats and media newsfolk lurched towards have been extraordinary.
Yesterday, as one of our Weekend Updates, we considered the current pickle in which the corporate news media finds itself.
Fearing that they had contributed to the defeat of Hillary Clinton by covering the news of her emails and other scandals, corporate newsrooms cooked up a new ethical rule: Do not report on stories based on data — no matter if confirmed — that may have been leaked by foreign malefactors, such as “the Russians.”
With that rule they suppressed, online, news about the Hunter Biden laptop and its contents, calling it “Russian disinformation.” Twitter banned the news source long enough to get Biden elected, and then the “Russian” story unraveled.
Now that same rule would, if consistently applied, work against reporting on Trump’s current
But it’s not just media malfeasance that is desperate, as Stephen Cox explains at Liberty. Referring to the ousting of Joe Biden from the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket, Mr. Cox writes that while this variety of machination is new to America, it is very old, historically: this is “the kind of thing the Roman imperial families used to do. This is the kind of thing the Bolsheviks used to do. The difference, of course, is that the Democratic Party oligarchs have lots and lots of money to enforce their will.”
Enforce it they do. Consider how many in the news media played along with Biden’s senescence, right up until they all proclaimed it obvious and disqualifying. They “turn on a dime.”
“Fragile regimes have a way of bringing the house down with them,” notes Cox. But why is it Trump who sends Democrats into paroxysms of terror?
Twenty years ago, Trump might have been dismissed out of hand. He isn’t now, and neither is Kamala Harris — a woman with all the charm of Hillary and all the competence of Sleepy Joe.
Desperate times, indeed. And Americans know it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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5 replies on “Measures of Desperation”
Is this type of machination all that new to America? Maybe not. Since at least the Civil War, presidential nominees were chosen by party bosses. They selected most of the convention delegates. History suggests that TR might well have won a third term in 1912 if GOP leaders had listened to voters. Instead, they split the party by again nominating the incumbent, William Howard Taft. Despite all the primaries he’d won, RFK was by no means assured the nomination in 1968. That changed in 1972. This year’s machinations took place before that disastrous debate. Democrats denied that Biden was incapable of running again and then Democratic officials denied any other viable candidates a chance to compete in primaries. Only token opposition was permitted. The fix was in.
It’s working! Eat your heart out.
You are oblivious to charm and competence! Let’s hear your evaluation of Trump, and include honesty! Bet you won’t.
Knew you wouldn’t cross Trump. Has all of you shaking in your boots.
What the heck are you talking about, Pam?
Are you saying that the woman everyone agreed was cringe two months ago is now a paragon of “charm and competence”?
Based on what? The cackle? The slurred gushings of a woman who seems (but probably isn’t) drunk? Her stellar record doing … what?
And “crossing Trump”? What are you talking about? Trump isn’t threatening our freedom of speech. But Democrats were united in Congress in defending online censorship that wandered outside the Overton Window as defined by … Democrats. This is history. Democrats praised the censorship. You seem to have developed a strange enthusiasm for partisan tyranny and then impute that tyranny to your most despised opponent.