It’s the Treason, Stupid
David Corn of Mother Jones makes an important point: The media is missing the story in how it reports the Trump-Russia scandal.
Much of the media framing of the Russia scandal has followed Trump’s lead and adopted his collusion-centric perspective. The debate, such as it is, has become whether Trump directly collaborated with Moscow’s covert operation—and whether Trump, as president, tried to thwart the investigation and obstruct justice. The story is not driven by the serious offenses already established: Trump and his associates encouraged and assisted an attack from a foreign foe.
In this ongoing fight, it is Trump and his bumper stickers versus a media presenting a wide variety of disparate disclosures that come and go quickly in a hyperchaotic information ecosystem, often absent full context. No wonder then that a recent poll found that 59 percent of Americans said Mueller has uncovered no crimes. In fact, he has secured 17 criminal indictments and obtained five guilty pleas. Accurate news reporting alone does not always carry the day.
This is not about whether the Mueller investigation will “save us” from Trump, as R.E. Vanella put it the other day. It’s about a foreign government having its hooks in the President of the United States after helping install him in the office. With all due respect to those who disagree, it doesn’t matter what the Democratic Party stands for if unlimited money donated secretly leads to rigged elections.
The Supreme Court invited this crisis with its Citizens United ruling. If money is speech, and anonymous speech is protected, there’s no effective barrier to foreign money finding its way into American elections.
But what Corn is writing about is the result of media behaving in its own interest. Giving prominent play to Trump’s “witch hunt” tweets serves his interests, but it also makes for a more competitive contest, and there’s nothing that ruins TV ratings like a one-sided sporting event. And if you go only on the factual evidence that’s been made public, Trump is a soccer team trailing 4-0 late in the second half.
Josh Marshall at TPM keeps making the same point: We know exactly what Trump’s team is accused of doing; whether Trump himself contacted Russians isn’t the issue. People with his campaign, as well as people in his business, were engaged with Russians and pro-Russia eastern Europeans throughout the campaign. They took meetings with Russian actors and did not report it to intelligence agencies at the time.
This is all crystal clear. Again, as Marshall points out, Trump’s motivations in all this are beside the point. Even if all he wanted was a Moscow tower, he still sold out his country trying to get it.
Yeah, I know Mike Pence is a horror. But is he more horrible than having someone destroy the post WW2 geopolitical order? I think not; ymmv.
Yeah, I still haven’t figured out the rabid focus on collusion and play to pay. It’s not like it’s a relatively recent manifestation of the political process. However, selling out one’s democratic system to a foreign power can only be called one thing – treason.
While I’m at it and FWIW, the display of the confederate battle flag is also treason and yes those who do that are honoring their heritage, which is a heritage of treason.
@Dave: The Confederate battle flag was designed after the original Stars and Bars was found too easy to confuse with the Stars and Stripes amid the smoke of the battlefield. So its raison d’etre was to send an unmistakable signal, a function it continues to serve to this day.
So long we have “for-profit” media, we’ll continue to be ill served. Collusion is the media’s term, and has sucked from its inception. We have freedom of the press, but the press itself is not free, at least not the broadcast press. They all suck. As the saying goes, you can’t serve two masters…money or truth, which shall it be?
Dave’s points stand.
@Paul-
Were you a regular passenger on the short bus in your school age days?
Do you realize that there is more to “press” than the broadcast press?
For the love of Jesus, the actual PRESS was the only “medium” (that’s the singular form of “media”, Tom Kline and Paul) for dissemination of news aside from the Town Crier.
To few people seek out the not for profit free press. It’s too easy to just turn on MSNBC or CNN and think you got the news of the day. No, hell no. If you aren’t watching Democracy Now, or Free Press, or reading progressive papers, you are not getting the truth, or hearing news the corporate media never tells us. GOP alt right only listens to Faux propaganda, or read alt right news. Problem is corporate newscasters are responsible for the chaos in this country. Recall they pushed Trump giving him tons of time on TV…even convincing liberals, and Obama supporters to vote for the craziest, con man in US history.
“even convincing liberals, and Obama supporters to vote for the craziest, con man in US history.”
I don’t think the media was responsible for those votes. As much as I agree that a for-profit propaganda outlet like Fox has been a disaster for self-government, remember that such propaganda was the meat and bones of the 18th-century press the First Amendment was written to protect.
Under self-government, the people are responsible for choosing their leaders. If they choose poorly, it’s on them.
Millions did not vote for Trump. Russia cyber warfare and foreign private and government money elected the moron, red haired step child. My opinion is that we can not count on corporate owned leaders regardless of party. They will always put the campaign funds and support to the ones who “brung to the dance”. How do we fix that.
Millions did not vote for Trump. Russia cyber warfare and foreign private and government money elected the moron, red haired step child. My opinion is that we can count on corporate owned leaders regardless of party. They will always put the campaign funds and support to the ones who “brung to the dance”. How do we fix that.
But millions also did. Unless and until we can show they tampered with vote totals — more likely that they somehow negated votes for Clinton than added votes for Trump — it’s on us.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/06/10/elizabeth-warren-democrats-will-keep-losing-until-entire-party-willing-take