30 Comments

Thanks Eric. Agree 100%.

Like many I have "bookmarks" on my laptop. Go to pages in the morning with coffee. Some years ago I stopped reading the NYT, and dropped Facebook. The former was easier--everybody reported on what the NYT said, so knowing what the NYT said was easy without reading the NYT. FB was harder. I am still curious about what became of the high school cheerleaders and athletes who once ruled the world.

And now I find myself avoiding the Washington Post, especially since the Biden Administration began.

Maybe I am in a "bubble," or feedback loop, maybe more woke than months ago. Regardless, Eric Boehlert and Press Run go well with coffee.

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WashPost during Biden era has been quite disappointing

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Disappointing, yes, but also predictable...

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McCarthy: "I don't think anyone is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with, we're sitting here with the President today." Right afterwards he tweets,‘I just met with Corrupt Joe Biden and he’s STILL planning to push his radical Socialist agenda onto the American people.’ Corrupt Joe Biden? Radical socialist agenda? Boggles the mind, which seems like that's the intent, and yes sir, the press is in failure mode sucking up to the GOP brand of hypocrisy. The "corrupt Joe Biden" slam should have been the headline. These people are not serious. They are clowns, out for personal power and fame; at least one of them dresses for work in the United States Capitol like he's at a wrestling match. The "crisis" is in half the elected political leadership, and the press needs to point that out.

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and this morning McCarthy came out against bipartisan Jan 6 commission

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I see Minority Leader Super Chicken is following Trump's orders no matter what...

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Please don't insult Super Chicken by comparing him to an invertebrate like McCarthy.

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Personally I don’t think a bipartisan commission, especially one made up of Congresscritters, is worth our time and I am not sure about one composed of Republicans and Democrats no longer in office would be much better. I thought the 9-11 Commission whitewashed the fact that Bush and his top people ignored months of dire warning from their own national security experts that Bin Laden was going to attack us. The commission was told by Tenet about about warnings given to Condi in July but did nothing to make that important information public. The only article I have seen about this was in Politico — the EU edition, not the US edition.

https://www.politico.eu/article/attacks-will-be-spectacular-cia-war-on-terror-bush-bin-laden/

There is a lot of evidence that the bipartisan 9-11 Commission whitewashed the facts about the Bush administration’s failure to try to protect us from attack. Imagine how much worse a bipartisan commission would be now.

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Why waste WE THE PEOPLE'S time with this nonsense of a bipartisan commission. We all watched terrorist attack the Capitol on the 6th whether the GOP wants to acknowledge or not. Democrats stop playing GOP game the people of this country need you focused on the now.

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The media is prepping the casual consumer of news that Biden has issues for the inevitable hope that the Republicans will take back the Senate and perhaps the House as well in 2022. My fear is that their efforts will be successful. The gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics combined with Democrats penchant to fall asleep at the midterms could spell disaster for Biden. I certainly hope that the Democrats who came out in droves to take the house in '18 and oust Trump and take the Senate in '20 will do so again bolstering our clout. It's going to be difficult especially when the scales are tilted to the right by the press that is owned by the billionaire class. Biden could come up with the cure for cancer and the WPO and NYT headline would be that Biden singlehandedly destroyed the cancer care industry.

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And I see on right wing webpages that their dream is to put Trump in the Speakers chair and then impeach Biden and Harris...

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Great piece, Eric. The real story is how Biden has craftily disarmed his progressive critics (like me). Looks like a beautiful setup for the midterms.

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Biden has been quite skillful....press still wants doom/gloom

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Watch what happens when the corrupted court kills Roe and the GOP stenographers really turn into Chicken Little.

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The hundredth-of-a-cent streetwalkers who comprise the DC political media brothel are the enemies of the people. They certainly are the enemies of journalism. Period.

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This. We need to grasp the fact that they are actively and gleefully engaged in undermining democracy.

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CNN just now: “Labor Shortage May Spell Trouble for Biden” lol Can’t make this up

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Wake up to see Val Demings is going to challenge Rubio in Florida...while the QAnon Party gets Andy Giuliani to run for Governor of New York...

US Politics is now a real life version of the Monty Python Sensible vs. Silly Party sketch and the Silly Party's Very Silly wing is gaining strength thanks to voter suppression laws

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Monty Python. Thank you.

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Of all the "Prostitute Press", in my opinion, no one is as vile as Annie Linskey. I don't know if she is still being paid to write "Trash Biden" trash at the NYTimes, but in the last few months the Washington Post has been paying her to write "Trash Biden" trash for them.

Linskey saw her success and clicks in writing dozens of articles about Joe, the rapist of Tara Reade. She did that even knowing what I, with no contacts, knew: that Reade was a known psychopathic liar, a narcissist, and a stealer of funds from an animal rescue group. Linskey could not NOT have known all that, but she know what her base of misguided feminists wanted and she gave it to them, even if it meant keeping Biden, the only person who could beat Trump, from beating Trump. Trump knew who was the only person who could beat him so he must have loved Linskey.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-faces-of-the-biden-administration-are-still-sometimes-behind-masks/2021/05/18/1a0d6de4-b73c-11eb-a5fe-bb49dc89a248_story.html

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Kevin McCarthy's statement, "I don't think anyone is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election." is an example of how comfortable he is making Trumpian level, demonstrably (and laughably) false claims when the cameras are rolling. McCarthy knows the media stenographers will just stand there and write it all down, and then spread that manure for him.

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Because those stenographers want Trump back in the Oval Office.

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I’m shocked, shocked I say, that editors would approve editorializing in headlines, while advancing the art/craft of Both Sides journalism.

The headlines you list, Eric, seem like they could have been written by Chris Cillizza, just unanswered questions and lists, and a pithy “only time will tell” conclusion.

There are always a lot of important stories to cover, but the President chooses his own assignments.

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CNN headline today:

"Middle East conflict offers insight into Biden's sometimes ruthless calculations about his purpose"

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Eeesh

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Thanks Eric again for your insightful commentary. Now if only the popular media would adapt your viewpoints as the popularly accepted, objective, universal fact and bias checks that they need to regularly be. It's great to hear you on progressive Sirius radio, but you should also be heard on CNN, NPR, and all the Network News channels etc. We unfortunately don't have a Walter Cronkite anymore. Your kind of analysis is needed to knock down those right-wing/conservative, "both sideism" media roadblocks holding the entire country down and stifling progressives from making any economic and political progress in this country to enrich the lives of all of us -- disregarding of economic status, religion or race -- just as intended in the US Constitution.

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Trump addicted the Beltway Parrot Press to rush of easy reporting of chaos. Many have switched their drug of choice from Trump to Biden. They are a pestilence. I won't give them the clicks they need to survive. In fact, I often find the moderate-conservative reporting and opinion more honest than the liberal opinion and reporting. Democrats are so often dishonest. I wish I had made a list of all the dishonesties I came across.

But the press is right to report on Democratic schism, on Democrats pulling out the knives as soon as Biden took office, on Biden and each other. I find Schumer especially repugnant. What’s the good of being a “big tent” if you keep pulling the tent down on your heads? The GOP used to be united and silent on their leader’s failings. What might save the 2022 mid-terms for the Democrats is the GOP crashing and burning.

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Schumer is an embarrassment. He has no political skills except for getting himself elected time after time, and maybe that was not skill, just being an old familiar face.

He is a typical self-serving pol. He cares more for the limelight than he does his party. As soon as he got the chance, he knifed Biden in the back over legalizing marijuana. No matter what you think of that issue, Joe stated clearly that he was not for it. Schumer didn't even give his own president the 100 days a president is supposed to be given before he jumped in front of the cameras to announce that he was going to bring it to a vote.

There was no rush. Schumer could have waited until Biden got through the biggest, most complicated agenda and the most horrifying mess in the history of the U.S. But Schumer is so small-minded that shafting Joe for the media attention was more important to him than the future of American democracy and of the Democratic party in 2022. Every crack in the party is a crack the GOP can ooze through.

Joe is the smartest, most experienced politician America has seen for a very long time, perhaps since FDR. Except for Nixon, the rest were all newbies in comparison. I wouldn't be surprised if Joe has always known who his enemies are and he’s always known that the GOP are not enemies he can’t crush, as long as he has his party behind him. His real enemies include the usual suspects on the far left, and apparently, Schumer.

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Schumer must go. One of the many many US Senate failings is the notion of seniority over merit. So many able D Senators who have a better skill set, and are more able to succeed. I mean what has Schumer done to bring Manchin in line? Uggghh

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This — “Biden is increasingly at odds with other Democrats over Israel” — is the second top of the front page WaPo headline in recent days framing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in terms of a problem for Biden. The phrasing “other Democrats” rather than “some Democrats” is clearly designed for maximum “Democrats in disarray” hype. I have only seen one article, by Michelle Goldberg in the Times, emphasizing that the current violence shows that Genius Jared’s Middle East agreement is a big fat failure. Given the fact that Trump clearly plans to run again that should be more of a story that some Dems wanting Biden to publicly criticize Israel. As for his temper, that isn’t always a bad thing. I would hope when they talked privately. Biden tore Bibi a new one for pushing Palestinians out of the homes in East Jerusalem to give them to settlers.

I did notice that one negative story that has not gotten the coverage it deserves is the horrifying break in the steel beam supporting the I 40 bridge over the Mississippi at Memphis and the subsequent mess in not only highway transportation but also barge traffic on the river. But then a lot of coverage of that would support Biden’s infrastructure spending plan so the media is probably afraid to help him too much by objectively covering this story.

The almost total lack of coverage of the rapid improvements of the mess Trump created at the border as well as the silly flap over masks is not just inexcusable but also shows blatant bias towards negative reporting and hyping of Biden problems rather than obvious successes.

Reporters are so eager for Biden’s honeymoon to be over that they are trying to make it happen.

The Atlantic has an article up about the in-depth listening tour of local news viewers done by Scripps which found that people are fed up with the relentless negativity and shallowness. You can bet the same is true for national news. Scripps tried adjusting their coverage and found that more substantive, less negative coverage is very popular especially with the coveted younger demo.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/local-news-media-trust-americans/618895/

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