Thanks Eric. Some days it seems the gaslighting continues. I appreciate you correcting the record.
The truth about the pandemic is that everyone wanted, no needed, the administration to succeed. Many looked with despair at other countries' success at limiting spread, and therefore deaths, and just wanted to do as well. But the lies continued and Trump sabotaged everything he could. Case in point-Dr. Atlas.
I watch the progress in the last 50 days and think, wow, what if the spread had been limited at the start. What is there was competency? Compassion? What if ...
Except this time the gaslighting is coming from the NY Times and its effort to prove, as Dean Baquet recently crowed about, that the Times would cover the Biden administration as aggressively as it covered the Trump administration — whether the Biden administration deserves it or not. The WaPo has published yet another editorial hand-wringing about debt and infrastructure projects. The editors had already written two or three similar articles about the COVID relief bill. Not once did they suggest repealing Trump’s unnecessary, budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy. Fred Hiatt and Dean Baquet are showing their true colors. Don’t raise taxes, balance the budget no matter how badly it damages our democracy by increasing economic inequality
There were i late 2017 some reporters at NYT critical of the massive tax cut. In fact some dug deep on the host of flaws, from too hasty passage to far-reaching consequences for states trying to provide a safety net for its citizens. See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/business/republican-tax-cut.html
I know there was criticism back them but none of them I have seen are saying we should repeal those budget-busting tax cuts which did next to nothing for our economy as a way to pay for Biden’s programs. If their worries about debt and inflation are real you would think that would be the first thing they would recommend.
(Note that the URL refers to his address as a "stimulus speech" - how they want to frame it.)
The 'best' they could come up with was 1) taking issue with Biden talking about months of lies and pandemic denial from Trump, 2) critiquing how to add up the death toll from the pandemic versus wars, and 3) claiming Biden was being misleading about the number of vaccines Trump supposedly ordered.
For four long years we had a firehose of lies from the Trump administration that were downplayed and minimized by The NY Times and others. As usual, they are trying to overcompensate for their failures now. This is the real media 'liberal bias.'
The Wapo’s Glenn Kessler has a doozy with this article about two moments when Biden was misleading in his address to the public. He criticizes Biden for saying that we have now lost more people to COVID than we lost in WWI, WWII, Vietnam and 9-11 because Biden didn’t count military deaths from the 1918 flu pandemic! Biden has said in the past he meant combat deaths but 9-11 deaths were not from combat. I seriously doubt anyone who heard that claim thought Biden was including deaths from the pandemic.
Then Kessler criticizes Biden for saying that many people thought his goal of getting 100 million vaccines done in 100 days was over the top because there haven’t been any polls showing that. Funny but the Post editors recently published two articles saying that “many economists” think Biden’s COVID relief bill is too large and will lead to inflation.
Just as with the Times’s article the top reader comments are appropriately brutal. My favorite is this one “Kessler’s summarization that the speech was "light on facts" was more misleading than either of the two things he complains about.”
If the mainstream media isn’t careful they are going to lose what little credibility they have left because the public is catching on to their games.
Just read it...nauseating...where were these people (so-called reporters) hounding trump on his taxes, his affairs, the accusations of rape, the lies about covid? I do think that Joe has been around long enough to totally get the MSM (Ron Klain as well and I love him) and he probably let's it slide right off his back, like water off a duck's...and he's home in Wilmington right now, sitting by a fire, while Jill makes Chicken Parmesan...and I hear that it is very very good.
How is dragging the former admin boss into the current admins situations covering both sides? I guess i thought that applied to say, a current thing with views from both sides that are currently in office. Apparently im wrong, but THE MAN TRIED TO STEAL OUR DEMOCRACY, how is there a single pub in this country that cares if he gets credit or does not, even if true, which what they said I guess may have been partly true, but....insurrection.!!!
I am flabbergasted by these reports of Trump bequeathing his star COVID program to the Biden administration. This is worse than fake equivalence because it requires inventing not only the equivalence but also the entire other side.
The harm Trump did during a national health crisis can not be overstated. He alone is responsible for thousands of Americans losing their lives due to his lies, bravado and ignorance. The fact that drug companies rushed to create a vaccine has nothing to do with his “leadership.” He turned everything he touched to $h1t.
This is the same press that continues to put out articles on why Andrew Cuomo should step down as Governor of NY because of sexual harassment allegations. We heard crickets for over four years when 22 women accused Trump of more egregious acts. I'm not defending Cuomo and if he's found guilty he needs to step down. But the double standard the press has for Republicans vs. Democrats is plainly obvious. In the case of Covid vaccine rollout, the NY Times article is absolutely laughable. Just after the Biden Administration took office, the big story was the Trump administration left nothing, no vaccine rollout plan. With the public's attention span as short as it is, I guess the press is trying to get away with saying that Trump had things in place? It's ridiculous. The mainstream media will continue this kissing Republicans ass charade as long as they can get away with it. Soon they will be interviewing Trump himself and how great he was from inside his prison cell.
This is why you don't listen to both sides "arguments" any longer. One side is clearly right here: Biden made this happen. The NYT has made it their full-time job to still cover Trump. They are one step away from moving to Mar A Lago. and crediting him with curing leprosy in India.
The Times’s conduct is the most inexcusable of all because not only did they clearly bend over backward for him, but did so having covered him for 40 years and thus knowing exactly who and what he was.
Biden could say the sky was blue, and the NY Times would come out with an article saying that statement was misleading. That the sky was in fact light blue with a touch of gray.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know the truth of the matter, but in my opinion the news media refuses to acknowledge that they got hoodwinked by Trump as well. Not in any macro sense of the word - the years long pointing out of Trump's buffoonery was like a nonstop parade. I mean that the news media didn't seem to en masse understand that with Trump there is no substance except an incessant need to feed his ego. The media was never ready for a President who quite literally didn't care about the US or quite frankly any human except himself. They didn't understand that the same man who would boast about how he was the greatest sex a woman had would also tell outrageous fairy tales about Covid just to make himself seem like a big man. That's all Trump is - a small person inside a PR facade of gigantism. The media is embarrassed and trying to cover their tracks post facto.
Yeah, agreed. It always sickened me when the media got excited when Trump acted “normal.” It’s as though they knew he was a buffoon but waited breathlessly for him to turn presidential. He was and will never be anything but John Barron, PR pro.
They knew he was pretending to be John Barron but went along with him anyway. Too bad they didn’t call him out for his dishonestly, corruption and terrible businesses back then instead of allowing him to get away with pretending to be a successful business mogul.
Here's the thing: In the late 80s-early 90s, Trump was a complete failure. The press covered him as such - all except the gossip pages. The latter kept pumping the story of Trump the playboy, Trump the cad, Trump the caricature, Trump the man with women on his arm. No doubt all of it pushed by Mr. Barron himself to hungry columnists looking for juicy crap to publish. The Apprentice (that horrible program) resuscitated Trump as the "successful businessman". Again, for no other reason than Mark Burnett and NBC wanting to make money.
And it never occurred to them that, at some point after being told 1,000 lies, maybe they should consider the possibility that Provocative Statement 1,001 is also a lie. All I ever asked was for Trump to be treated like any other source: Consider the track record before quoting.
Yes. Outside of oft quoted lie-ticker, the media too often just let what he said hang in the air without comment. I can't do anything about the right wing media that actively championed each and every lie. The more mainstream media should not have allowed themselves to be stunned by the volume of lies. I think they might have been saying to themselves, "There's no way people believe what he says - right?"
The Trump vaccine rollout was a fraud. The Biden appointee who took over said there was no plan in place other than "let the states handle it." And then, as noted, the WH lobbied Congress to deny the funding the states needed to get people vaccinated. That's what happens when an incompetent ego maniac who politicizes everything allows his equally incompetent son-in-law to run a shadow task force on a deadly pandemic.
I don't know if it's the Russians but it seems like after 1-6 media have doubled down in its Rethug Love. I decided in 2016 they had been willingly engaged in a op to destroy democracy. Their behavior after 1-6 is proof. Everything makes sense.
I just read the article. It’s ridiculous. No one who has paid any attention thinks the Trump administration did nothing about vaccines because he has been given credit for Operation Warp Speed but the facts in the article prove that if Biden hadn’t taken over we would be nowhere close to the number of vaccinations we have now and more people would be dying. But why ruin a chance to prove you are fulfilling you promise to be as aggressive in reporting on Biden and you were on Trump. On the bright side the top “Readers’ Pick” comments are brutal, as they should be. I particularly liked the one that starts “Both sides, both sides, both sides.Please, can we drop the ridiculous pretense? “
Those former Trump staffers who say Biden is following their playbook are every bit as aggressively stupid as Trump is. They were picked for their refusal to know anything or learn anything. Their playbook was sitting around and occasionally calling someone to say “Hey man, make more vaccine.” They don’t even know what they don’t know, and they don’t know what Biden is doing.
The reason presidents get the deference they get is because they are surrounded by a huge structure of knowledge and they are presumed to be listening to it. Trump could not have made it any clearer that he wasn’t interested in listening to anything or anyone. He was the host of The Apprentice in the WH and he was determined to remain that way. And the press still gave him that deference. They don’t even know why.
I'm sticking with them because as bad as they are in their so-called political coverage, they are so good at so many other things. At the moment, though, my favorite is Carl Hulse doing a news analysis about redefining bipartisanship when he has spent years painting Lamar Alexander as bipartisan and more recently has tried to pigeonhole other republicans that way. It's an embarrassment to journalism.
I know. I love their Friday book newsletter and their features on culture, education, etc. They did excellent reporting on the riots. I also love Jennifer Rubin, Greg Sargent, Catherine Rampell and a few other opinion columnists. I still have time before subscription ends. Hasn't Hulse been there forever?
The Post has so much great stuff, as The Times does.
Hulse has been there forever, yes, which is possibly part of the problem. But I have to cut him a little slack because he has what may be the best story ever about my guy Harry Reid--it's in Mark Leibovich's This Town, and it goes something like this. Hulse was in Reid's office when Reid came out and asked what was new. Hulse said he was going to the congressional staff party at the Ritz-Carlton and Reid said he lived there and was going home--would Hulse like a lift? Well, of course, even if he didn't need one. So they ride and Hulse comments that it must be convenient for Reid that the party is being held downstairs from his apartment and Reid said, "I wouldn't go to that party if it was in my living room." He said he went to two events the entire time he was in DC, once because his wife wanted to and once because his brother was visiting. And I thought, that's why he was a great leader.
I love the book because it does convey what a brothel it is, though he doesn't show it for the media to the degree I'd like--but I understand it. It's harder to do when you're in it, you know?
Murdoch is starting up a new “news network” in the UK. We aren’t the only country dealing with extremists on the right unfortunately.Brexit is the disaster it was predicted to be but Boris keeps on with his crackpot policies. At least we threw Trump out.
Thanks Eric. Some days it seems the gaslighting continues. I appreciate you correcting the record.
The truth about the pandemic is that everyone wanted, no needed, the administration to succeed. Many looked with despair at other countries' success at limiting spread, and therefore deaths, and just wanted to do as well. But the lies continued and Trump sabotaged everything he could. Case in point-Dr. Atlas.
I watch the progress in the last 50 days and think, wow, what if the spread had been limited at the start. What is there was competency? Compassion? What if ...
No, I'm not having the rewrite of 2020.
press desire to normalize Trump never ends
Why though??
Very good question
Except this time the gaslighting is coming from the NY Times and its effort to prove, as Dean Baquet recently crowed about, that the Times would cover the Biden administration as aggressively as it covered the Trump administration — whether the Biden administration deserves it or not. The WaPo has published yet another editorial hand-wringing about debt and infrastructure projects. The editors had already written two or three similar articles about the COVID relief bill. Not once did they suggest repealing Trump’s unnecessary, budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy. Fred Hiatt and Dean Baquet are showing their true colors. Don’t raise taxes, balance the budget no matter how badly it damages our democracy by increasing economic inequality
There were i late 2017 some reporters at NYT critical of the massive tax cut. In fact some dug deep on the host of flaws, from too hasty passage to far-reaching consequences for states trying to provide a safety net for its citizens. See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/business/republican-tax-cut.html
I know there was criticism back them but none of them I have seen are saying we should repeal those budget-busting tax cuts which did next to nothing for our economy as a way to pay for Biden’s programs. If their worries about debt and inflation are real you would think that would be the first thing they would recommend.
The NY Times ran a 'fact check' on Biden's speech that was an exercise in finding something - anything to criticize.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/biden-stimulus-speech-fact-check.html
(Note that the URL refers to his address as a "stimulus speech" - how they want to frame it.)
The 'best' they could come up with was 1) taking issue with Biden talking about months of lies and pandemic denial from Trump, 2) critiquing how to add up the death toll from the pandemic versus wars, and 3) claiming Biden was being misleading about the number of vaccines Trump supposedly ordered.
For four long years we had a firehose of lies from the Trump administration that were downplayed and minimized by The NY Times and others. As usual, they are trying to overcompensate for their failures now. This is the real media 'liberal bias.'
classic nitpicking in the name of holding Both Sides accountable
The Wapo’s Glenn Kessler has a doozy with this article about two moments when Biden was misleading in his address to the public. He criticizes Biden for saying that we have now lost more people to COVID than we lost in WWI, WWII, Vietnam and 9-11 because Biden didn’t count military deaths from the 1918 flu pandemic! Biden has said in the past he meant combat deaths but 9-11 deaths were not from combat. I seriously doubt anyone who heard that claim thought Biden was including deaths from the pandemic.
Then Kessler criticizes Biden for saying that many people thought his goal of getting 100 million vaccines done in 100 days was over the top because there haven’t been any polls showing that. Funny but the Post editors recently published two articles saying that “many economists” think Biden’s COVID relief bill is too large and will lead to inflation.
Just as with the Times’s article the top reader comments are appropriately brutal. My favorite is this one “Kessler’s summarization that the speech was "light on facts" was more misleading than either of the two things he complains about.”
If the mainstream media isn’t careful they are going to lose what little credibility they have left because the public is catching on to their games.
I read Kessler today early in the morning
Skimmed Comment section just after 7 am EST. Non stop negative crits. Non stop
Just read it...nauseating...where were these people (so-called reporters) hounding trump on his taxes, his affairs, the accusations of rape, the lies about covid? I do think that Joe has been around long enough to totally get the MSM (Ron Klain as well and I love him) and he probably let's it slide right off his back, like water off a duck's...and he's home in Wilmington right now, sitting by a fire, while Jill makes Chicken Parmesan...and I hear that it is very very good.
We all sure have!
How is dragging the former admin boss into the current admins situations covering both sides? I guess i thought that applied to say, a current thing with views from both sides that are currently in office. Apparently im wrong, but THE MAN TRIED TO STEAL OUR DEMOCRACY, how is there a single pub in this country that cares if he gets credit or does not, even if true, which what they said I guess may have been partly true, but....insurrection.!!!
I am flabbergasted by these reports of Trump bequeathing his star COVID program to the Biden administration. This is worse than fake equivalence because it requires inventing not only the equivalence but also the entire other side.
it really does defy description
The harm Trump did during a national health crisis can not be overstated. He alone is responsible for thousands of Americans losing their lives due to his lies, bravado and ignorance. The fact that drug companies rushed to create a vaccine has nothing to do with his “leadership.” He turned everything he touched to $h1t.
all of that! It’s impossible to talk abt Trump and vaccines and ignore the pandemic damage he did
This is the same press that continues to put out articles on why Andrew Cuomo should step down as Governor of NY because of sexual harassment allegations. We heard crickets for over four years when 22 women accused Trump of more egregious acts. I'm not defending Cuomo and if he's found guilty he needs to step down. But the double standard the press has for Republicans vs. Democrats is plainly obvious. In the case of Covid vaccine rollout, the NY Times article is absolutely laughable. Just after the Biden Administration took office, the big story was the Trump administration left nothing, no vaccine rollout plan. With the public's attention span as short as it is, I guess the press is trying to get away with saying that Trump had things in place? It's ridiculous. The mainstream media will continue this kissing Republicans ass charade as long as they can get away with it. Soon they will be interviewing Trump himself and how great he was from inside his prison cell.
This is why you don't listen to both sides "arguments" any longer. One side is clearly right here: Biden made this happen. The NYT has made it their full-time job to still cover Trump. They are one step away from moving to Mar A Lago. and crediting him with curing leprosy in India.
The New York Times might become more of an embarrassment to New York than Trump.
The Times’s conduct is the most inexcusable of all because not only did they clearly bend over backward for him, but did so having covered him for 40 years and thus knowing exactly who and what he was.
They are a close 2nd...
Biden could say the sky was blue, and the NY Times would come out with an article saying that statement was misleading. That the sky was in fact light blue with a touch of gray.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know the truth of the matter, but in my opinion the news media refuses to acknowledge that they got hoodwinked by Trump as well. Not in any macro sense of the word - the years long pointing out of Trump's buffoonery was like a nonstop parade. I mean that the news media didn't seem to en masse understand that with Trump there is no substance except an incessant need to feed his ego. The media was never ready for a President who quite literally didn't care about the US or quite frankly any human except himself. They didn't understand that the same man who would boast about how he was the greatest sex a woman had would also tell outrageous fairy tales about Covid just to make himself seem like a big man. That's all Trump is - a small person inside a PR facade of gigantism. The media is embarrassed and trying to cover their tracks post facto.
Yeah, agreed. It always sickened me when the media got excited when Trump acted “normal.” It’s as though they knew he was a buffoon but waited breathlessly for him to turn presidential. He was and will never be anything but John Barron, PR pro.
They knew he was pretending to be John Barron but went along with him anyway. Too bad they didn’t call him out for his dishonestly, corruption and terrible businesses back then instead of allowing him to get away with pretending to be a successful business mogul.
Here's the thing: In the late 80s-early 90s, Trump was a complete failure. The press covered him as such - all except the gossip pages. The latter kept pumping the story of Trump the playboy, Trump the cad, Trump the caricature, Trump the man with women on his arm. No doubt all of it pushed by Mr. Barron himself to hungry columnists looking for juicy crap to publish. The Apprentice (that horrible program) resuscitated Trump as the "successful businessman". Again, for no other reason than Mark Burnett and NBC wanting to make money.
As I've said before, I think they couldn't believe that someone so clearly inept could have succeeded in one way or another for decades.
And it never occurred to them that, at some point after being told 1,000 lies, maybe they should consider the possibility that Provocative Statement 1,001 is also a lie. All I ever asked was for Trump to be treated like any other source: Consider the track record before quoting.
Yes. Outside of oft quoted lie-ticker, the media too often just let what he said hang in the air without comment. I can't do anything about the right wing media that actively championed each and every lie. The more mainstream media should not have allowed themselves to be stunned by the volume of lies. I think they might have been saying to themselves, "There's no way people believe what he says - right?"
The Trump vaccine rollout was a fraud. The Biden appointee who took over said there was no plan in place other than "let the states handle it." And then, as noted, the WH lobbied Congress to deny the funding the states needed to get people vaccinated. That's what happens when an incompetent ego maniac who politicizes everything allows his equally incompetent son-in-law to run a shadow task force on a deadly pandemic.
I guess The Times has been taken over by Russians? Only way I can explain it.
I don't know if it's the Russians but it seems like after 1-6 media have doubled down in its Rethug Love. I decided in 2016 they had been willingly engaged in a op to destroy democracy. Their behavior after 1-6 is proof. Everything makes sense.
The Biden administration needs to remind everyone, at every opportunity, that they've been the ones helping the American public.
That will be hard, since the media never gives Democrats a camera or a microphone.
I'm not a Twitter user, but here are two hashtags that need to be out there:
#BidenVaccine
and when the recovery starts:
#BidenBoom
I just read the article. It’s ridiculous. No one who has paid any attention thinks the Trump administration did nothing about vaccines because he has been given credit for Operation Warp Speed but the facts in the article prove that if Biden hadn’t taken over we would be nowhere close to the number of vaccinations we have now and more people would be dying. But why ruin a chance to prove you are fulfilling you promise to be as aggressive in reporting on Biden and you were on Trump. On the bright side the top “Readers’ Pick” comments are brutal, as they should be. I particularly liked the one that starts “Both sides, both sides, both sides.Please, can we drop the ridiculous pretense? “
Perhaps it is a GOOD thing that fewer and fewer people are reading newspapers....
Those former Trump staffers who say Biden is following their playbook are every bit as aggressively stupid as Trump is. They were picked for their refusal to know anything or learn anything. Their playbook was sitting around and occasionally calling someone to say “Hey man, make more vaccine.” They don’t even know what they don’t know, and they don’t know what Biden is doing.
The reason presidents get the deference they get is because they are surrounded by a huge structure of knowledge and they are presumed to be listening to it. Trump could not have made it any clearer that he wasn’t interested in listening to anything or anyone. He was the host of The Apprentice in the WH and he was determined to remain that way. And the press still gave him that deference. They don’t even know why.
I sent a letter to the editor that won't be published because it all but calls The Times's Washington political staff the brothel workers they are.
Good for you. I cancelled my WaPo subscription but am waffling because I want to be able to drag them in the comments, which I have been doing.
I am doing that as well; every chance that I get.
I'm sticking with them because as bad as they are in their so-called political coverage, they are so good at so many other things. At the moment, though, my favorite is Carl Hulse doing a news analysis about redefining bipartisanship when he has spent years painting Lamar Alexander as bipartisan and more recently has tried to pigeonhole other republicans that way. It's an embarrassment to journalism.
I know. I love their Friday book newsletter and their features on culture, education, etc. They did excellent reporting on the riots. I also love Jennifer Rubin, Greg Sargent, Catherine Rampell and a few other opinion columnists. I still have time before subscription ends. Hasn't Hulse been there forever?
The Post has so much great stuff, as The Times does.
Hulse has been there forever, yes, which is possibly part of the problem. But I have to cut him a little slack because he has what may be the best story ever about my guy Harry Reid--it's in Mark Leibovich's This Town, and it goes something like this. Hulse was in Reid's office when Reid came out and asked what was new. Hulse said he was going to the congressional staff party at the Ritz-Carlton and Reid said he lived there and was going home--would Hulse like a lift? Well, of course, even if he didn't need one. So they ride and Hulse comments that it must be convenient for Reid that the party is being held downstairs from his apartment and Reid said, "I wouldn't go to that party if it was in my living room." He said he went to two events the entire time he was in DC, once because his wife wanted to and once because his brother was visiting. And I thought, that's why he was a great leader.
I'm a Reid fan also. I read This Town but forgot this story.
I love the book because it does convey what a brothel it is, though he doesn't show it for the media to the degree I'd like--but I understand it. It's harder to do when you're in it, you know?
This makes me so angry. We do NOT need fodder coming out of the established press that will help Rump run again. Why? Why????
I posted about this last night and I find myself wondering: did Rupert Murdoch buy the New York Times???
Murdoch is starting up a new “news network” in the UK. We aren’t the only country dealing with extremists on the right unfortunately.Brexit is the disaster it was predicted to be but Boris keeps on with his crackpot policies. At least we threw Trump out.
Yes, Brexit IS a disaster...such a shame for countless Brits...You always knew it was going to end up this way.