Eric Boehlert

belated, sadly killed on bike 4 22<div>
</div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/chris-hayes/chris-hayes-remembers-media-critic-eric-boehlert-defender-truth">https://www.mediamatters.org/chris-hayes/chris-hayes-remembers-media-critic-eric-boehlert-defender-truth</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-press-finally-tried-and-failed-to-stand-up-to-trump"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-press-finally-tried-and-failed-to-stand-up-to-trump</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The press finally tried—and failed—to stand up to Trump</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos December 31, 2019</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With Donald Trump becoming the first American president to be impeached in his first term, while holed up in the White House tweeting endless attacks around the clock like some internet troll, 2019 should have been the year the Beltway media finally shed its signature timidity and forcefully stood up to him. This should have been the year the press worked up the courage to disband the pointless protocols newsroom had established for covering Trump (he’s not a “liar,” he’s not a “racist”), and simply started telling the hard truths about him. <b>And while there were some welcome flashes of truth-telling, especially surrounding the Ukraine scandal and the impeachment, for the most part the D.C. press still hasn’t signaled that’s it’s ready, or willing, to take the necessary steps needed to cover Trump.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There continues to be a collective reluctance to grapple with today’s difficult reality. Unfamiliar with covering authoritarian regimes or how to respond to them, many news outlets remain committed to treating Trump’s spectacle as a reality TV show.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump remains the most deeply radical player in American politics, yet the press corps is still trying to cover him as a traditional political figure, which means if the president of the United States makes some sort of public statement on a pressing issue of the day, you quote him under the assumption that he’s telling the truth and not just making stuff up. But he’s not, and he is. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump in 2019 continued to benefit from press coverage that obediently pretended that he’s an honest broker. Wash, rinse, repeat. This, while Trump maintains his dangerous campaign to paint the press as the “enemy of the people.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oddly committed to<b> normalizing </b>Trump by scrubbing off his hateful and dangerous rough edges, many in the Beltway press continue to play a strange game in which they refuse to describe what they clearly see in front of them. Whether it’s the fear of Trump Twitter attacks or the nearly five-decade-long GOP campaign to demonize the “liberal media,” newsrooms today nearly uniformly refuse to address the mounting, obvious signs that Trump is a deeply unstable man. Journalists watch Trump hole up in the White House spamming Twitter on some weekends with hundreds of illogical posts and then politely look away.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Incredibly, as I noted in August, this represented one 48-hour period in 2019:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He quoted a rabid conspiracy theorist radio host who declared that Israeli Jews love Trump as if he were the “King of Israel” and “the second coming of God,” while Trump himself accused American Jews of “great disloyalty” if they voted for Democrats. He attacked the prime minister of Denmark (“nasty”) because she will not sell him Greenland and she mocked the very idea as “absurd.” He suggested he might serve more than two terms in office. He slurred his words while reading a speech off a teleprompter. He accused journalists of trying to ruin the U.S. economy. He claimed Google had “manipulated” millions of votes in Hillary Clinton’s favor during the 2016 election. He suggested giving himself a Medal of Honor. He said doctors in El Paso, Texas, left their operating rooms mid-surgery in order to greet him during his visit there following a local gun massacre. And he referred to the NRA as if it were a co-equal branch of the federal government.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Compared to all previous American presidents, that would have easily surpassed the irrational missteps they made during an entire time in office. For Trump, it was just his vacation week. Yet the press remains consistently timid in dealing with Trump’s blatantly unstable behavior. Newsrooms today nearly uniformly refuse to address the mounting, obvious signs that Trump remains a deeply troubled man.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>What does it mean for the most powerful leader in the free world to be acting in a bizarre and often seemingly schizophrenic fashion? </b>And how is every administration official who appears on television not immediately and repeatedly asked whether Trump is mentally fit to hold office, and whether he poses a danger to this country? If the same journalists watched a foreign leader behaving as erratically as Trump does, that would be the first question they posed to officials.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fact that a sitting president has unleashed so many bizarre public performances, punctuated by so many incomprehensible non sequiturs, means his stability and capacity ought to be questioned—and it ought to be a constant news story. But it’s still not.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Of course, 2019 was the year that White House press briefings were officially canceled.</b> In a move that once would have been considered an unthinkable act by any White House, the Trump team simply pulled the plug, leaving White House reporters with extremely limited access to officials who are willing to answer even the simplest questions about the administration’s policies and agenda. In the face of that drastic action, news outlets took no collective action in response. They could have used their clout to send a powerful message if they had pulled their reporters out and signaled they weren’t going to be used as props for the press charades the White House plays.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Instead, reporters dutifully gathered outside the White House to shout questions at Trump during his so-called “Chopper Talk” sessions</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">as he approached the presidential helicopter on the White House grounds. The controlled chaos of those sessions, where reporters yell simplistic questions, allows Trump to pick and choose reporters at random, and to ignore questions he doesn’t like. He’s also immune from follow-up questions and is free once again to lie indiscriminately, without being held accountable. All of which cable news outlets air in its entirety under the guise of “news.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And that’s when the press wasn’t being willingly duped in 2019 by Trump’s team, and especially his attorney general, William Barr. In a signature press failure for the year, reporters for days played along with Department of Justice propaganda about the Mueller report and how it had supposedly exonerated Trump. But the only person claiming that at the time was Barr, who wouldn’t allow reporters to see the full report.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Undeterred, journalists simply took Barr’s untrustworthy four-page press release and treated that as the full report. The New York Times rushed to report that Trump had been exonerated and that Mueller’s conclusions had provided Trump with a “powerful boost” toward re-election. Reminder: Nobody at the Times had read a single page of the Mueller report. News outlets everywhere scrambled to produce pro-Trump headlines based on Barr’s propaganda: “Mueller finds no conspiracy” (The Washington Post), “Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy” (The New York Times), “Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy” (Politico), “Mueller doesn’t find Trump campaign conspired with Russia” (The Wall Street Journal), “Mueller finds no Trump collusion, leaves obstruction open” (Associated Press).</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They all soon discovered the obvious reality: Trump and his team had simply lied about the contents of the Mueller report, hoping (knowing?) that the press would fall for the false spin, which too many outlets did.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The key to covering Trump isn’t some deep mystery for news organizations, and it doesn’t require much sacrifice. It simply demands honesty and a willingness to be clear about what’s happening in this country. Sadly, that was lacking in 2019.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/why-the-liberal-media-loves-trump-so-much/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/why-the-liberal-media-loves-trump-so-much/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Why the ‘liberal’ media loves Trump so much</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon December 13, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American mainstream news media made many mistakes in its coverage of the 2016 presidential election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It treated Donald Trump as a harmless curiosity because he was a reality TV show star and professional (alleged) billionaire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings — both real and perceived — were amplified. Trump’s were downplayed if not largely ignored.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The mainstream media thought Trump was a harmless amusement, and not a demagogue, racial authoritarian or fascist in waiting. He was good for their ratings and profits. This meant the threat he posed to democracy could be overlooked because money apparently matters more than civic duty.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Too many reporters, journalists and other members of the commentariat hoped that Trump would mature into a more “traditional” candidate and then president. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, this foolish hope was the dominant narrative through the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump’s first year in office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the end of the third year of Trump’s presidency the American media continues to enable Trump and his party’s assault on democracy and the truth. Few mainstream voices are willing to consistently state the truth that Donald Trump is a fascist, a racist and mentally unwell, and that he is likely beholden to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In all, the mainstream media cringes in terror before Trump and his supporters’ threats of violence and other and acts of intimidation. It all too often defaults to “fairness” and “balance” and both-sides-ism, elevating Trump’s most outrageous lies into reasonable opinions about “alternative facts.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Yes, there have been successes, including important investigative reporting on Trump’s corruption, his abusive treatment of nonwhite migrants and refugees, and, of course, the Ukraine scandal. But overall, the mainstream news media has learned few lessons from the many postmortems on how it failed in its responsibilities as guardians of democracy in the 2016 presidential election. Indeed, it now appears ready to repeat the same errors in 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eric Boehlert is an award-winning journalist who has written for Media Matters, Rolling Stone and Billboard. He was previously a senior writer for Salon. Boehlert is also the author of the books “Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press” and “Lapdog: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In this conversation he explains how the mainstream American news media helped to elect Donald Trump because of a deep dislike for Hillary and Bill Clinton.</b>Boehlert also warns that the <b>media has helped to normalize and protect Donald Trump because of an unwillingness to explain that he is a true aberration in American history. Under Trump’s regime, Boehlert tells me, the United States really does not have a president.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Boehlert also highlights how the American mainstream news media is both cowardly and complicit with Trump’s assault on democracy because of its unwillingness to tell the truth about the threat he and his regime represent to the country and the world.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We are now approaching the end of the third year of Trump’s regime. Are things better, worse or about how you expected?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I am not surprised. In fact, I think it was the night of the election or the day after when I put up two tweets that I remember quite vividly. One was, “It is going to be so much worse than anyone can imagine.” I also said that the American press is not going to save us from Donald Trump. Unfortunately, both of those observations were true.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why were so many people in denial?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There was all that chatter about how America’s political institutions were so strong and they would keep Trump in check. People were also saying that we should have a businessman as a president and Hillary Clinton is so conniving and in the end it will all be fine. That was the Beltway conventional wisdom: Trump won’t be able to break anything, this country has been around for so long, we’ll be fine. And then of course the exact opposite happened.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given all the evidence to the contrary, how were members of the mainstream media able to tell themselves such a thing? By what logic were they operating?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A lot of it was driven by their contempt for Hillary Clinton. There is a hostility towards Hillary among the news media that goes back to the 1990s</b>. There was an attempt to normalize Trump because the mainstream, inside-the-Beltway corporate media types did not like her. Of course, almost everyone was convinced Hillary was going to win. In the fall of 2016, I believe that the American news media saw its job as to make sure her win was as unsatisfying as possible, that it wouldn’t be historic and she would limp across the finish line.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ultimately, Hillary Clinton would not be able to take a victory lap and<b> too many in the American news media miscalculated in the end. By being so relentlessly negative towards Clinton and letting Trump get away with so much stuff, the news media did not calculate that he could ever win. And in the end, that is what happened.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given their error of overcompensating against Hillary Clinton why didn’t the American news media go after Donald Trump with more zeal?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One would reasonably think that the press would just be chomping at the bit. Trump is corrupt. He’s dishonest. He lies about everything. In theory one would think the press would have a field day with Trump. This is what the press loves to do. They’re going to knock this guy down, they are going to expose him. But exactly the opposite happened. Why? There are many reasons.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump effectively bullied the American news media during the campaign. They were shocked that he won. The press felt like they missed a big story. Because Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by 70,000 votes, the American news media felt like there was this huge white middle-class rural movement that they had missed. One fluke election made them feel like they were fundamentally out of touch. The American press is also perpetually afraid of the Republican Party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The American news media is possessed by a deep fear of Republican hardball. Therefore, they were nervous about being portrayed as out of touch because Trump had won and they missed the story</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> They’re nervous about being portrayed as part of the “liberal media”</span> and they had never experienced anything like Trump before. They got a taste of it during the campaign with all of Trump’s “fake news” and such things. That knocked the American news media back on their heels and they didn’t have the courage to stand up against Trump. This happened in many different ways and important moments.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American mainstream press was cowed, and they embraced this timidity. In turn, they decided, particularly the <b>New York Times,</b> that they need to go write a story literally every week for the next two years about white voters in red states and how much they love Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But when Barack Obama was president for eight years, I don’t think there was one story in the New York Times about how black voters in Baltimore love Barack Obama. It wasn’t news. The New York Times didn’t care about love for Obama among black voters. But wow, the New York Times loves to go to those diners and find those white folks who love Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In total, the press has been bending over backwards because they were afraid of Trump.</b> We are almost three years into this administration. Now, recently, the press certainly has shown signs that they’re going to stand up to Trump. This is mostly just because of the facts of the Ukraine scandal — facts which are mind-boggling. Moreover, there is really no other way to portray the facts of what Trump did with Ukraine than as a crisis for Donald Trump. But not calling him a racist, not calling him a liar, not questioning his mental stability? Those should have been basic journalism tasks from March and February of 2017 forward, and it just never happened.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Could it be that there are many people in the American news media, journalists and reporters and others, who have never had to contemplate that their work would put their lives at risk from Trump and his supporters?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Certainly, the American press, for the most part, has never had to deal with this. The American press has no history or tradition of covering authoritarian rule. That is a skill necessary in Eastern Europe and in Third World or developing countries. The idea that the press is under attack in the United States institutionally, by a ruling party or from the president of the United States — and the overall creeping loss of press freedom — has been revelatory for many reporters and journalists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>If you had said four years ago, “There will never be another White House press briefing under the next Republican president,” most people would have looked at you with incredulity. Such a prediction would be viewed as ridiculous.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’ve been having press briefings televised since the ’90s. We’ve had them at the White House since the Kennedy years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump is going to come in and cancel the press briefings? The press would never let that happen. That was thought to be inconceivable. But now here we are in America with Trump. It has been almost 250 days since the last press briefing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump hired a new press secretary, and she will likely never host a press briefing in the White House. That is a perfect example of the creep that happened over the first two years of the Trump administration. The press could have done many things in response. To say there was nothing the press could have done is total nonsense. These news organizations did absolutely nothing and they let it happen. These news organizations could have pulled their teams from the White House, for example.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Now we are left with these “chopper talk” sessions where Trump walks from the White House to the helicopter. The blades are whirling, people are shouting questions at him. <b>Trump doesn’t answer follow-ups</b>. That’s the press access. The press in the White House is supposed to be the people’s representative by providing some sort of transparency. Trump has totally rigged the game.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How do we make sense of the dividing line between cowardice and complicity in the press?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cowardice versus complicity? It’s all the same stew to me. The biggest problem in the last two or three years is just refusing to tell the truth. There are so many examples of Trump and his administration not doing that. There is all this talk about Donald Trump as a “chaos agent” or some type of “disruptor” and things like that. We are so far beyond that description.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>We don’t really have a president of the United States anymore. </b>The American press should be talking about that fact. In no traditional or historical sense is Donald Trump filling the role that every other president of the United States has. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When America has a foreign policy based on complete incoherence or payoffs to Turkey or Russia, the American press does not really know how to portray those events.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The American press knows that Trump is not a healthy, mentally stable person. The press can see that day in and day out, and yet they are not allowed to put that in their news stories. The news media often has to invent fantasies and narratives to make Trump look cogent.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If we in America were talking about a president being a Manchurian candidate for another county the idea would have been rejected as irresponsible. The president of the United States would never act in the interest of a foreign country. Yet, here we are.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">If the American press were to talk about Trump as a racist, a fascist or a pathological liar, or say that he is not mentally well, then it changes the dominant narrative and terrain. Once you start addressing those issues in the news coverage — any one of those — that has to be the only story you cover every day and for the rest of Trump’s presidency. One can’t acknowledge the president of the United States being an open racist and then cover it for two days. It is a defining story in American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The press does not want to have to cover those stories every day for the rest of the Trump presidency because they know it would unleash a torrent of attacks from Trump, the Republican Party, conservatives en masse and Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber</b>. The press wants to keep a lid on it all. So the American press says things like “Trump uses ‘racially tinged rhetoric.'” We all know what those euphemisms really mean.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You have had access to editors and newsrooms. How are these decisions being made?</font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div>