The media have no idea how to cover increasingly deranged GOP
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Hours after Republican House members forced Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to surrender her leadership role for the sin of denouncing Trump lies about his election loss, Republicans at a House Oversight Committee hearing addressing the Capitol Hill insurrection spent the same day spreading misinformation about Trump's attempted coup.
Claiming that what transpired that day really wasn't a riot but instead a collection of misguided enthusiasts voicing their concerns, Republicans made clear not only would they not assign blame to Trump for stoking the deadly assault, but they were going to defend the rioters and rewrite history about that ugly day on Capitol Hill.
From Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA): "There was no insurrection. To call it an insurrection is a bold-faced lie."
In normal times, if the public sacking of Cheney for lack of fealty and the public support for insurrection had happened in the same calendar year it would be been considered a shocking turn of events for a mainstream political party in this country. The fact that both events happened within hours of each other this week only highlighted how radical, dangerous, and anti-democratic the GOP has become, as it hurtles far beyond the mainstream and into the abyss.
Unfortunately, the Beltway press has no idea how to cover this story. It still refuses to use the proper tools and language to put the troubling actions of the GOP in context via its straight news coverage. Hiding behind Both Sides journalism, timid language, and purposeful naïveté, news outlets still aren't being honest about the dire threat Trump Republicans now pose to the country.
Watching the party maneuver itself to be able to invalidate future elections — by passing voter suppression laws, installing local election boards that refuse to certify wins, empowering state legislatures to refuse to certify their state tallies, and electing a Republican majority in the House of Representatives that deny the Electoral College count — means the United States faces the most entrenched, internal political threat since the Civil War. That's no exaggeration, considering the defining loyalty test for the GOP today is backing Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen, which in turns positions the party to question all future election results.
The GOP and its followers have become consumed in deliberate lies, yet the press still views the party as a serious entity whose views deserve to be treated respectfully.
"It's time the media stop covering the GOP as a political party - it's not," tweeted SiriusXM radio show host Dean Obeidallah. "Today's Republican party is a white nationalist, fascist movement and those exact words need to be used by the media so everyone gets the threat the GOP poses to our nation."
It's clearly a conservative movement that's flown off the rails, and resembles nothing we've seen before in modern American politics.
Just in recent days:
• Republicans in Arizona running the clown 'audit' of the 2020 election are searching for traces of bamboo in paper ballots to prove they are counterfeits smuggled in from Southeast Asia.
• A Colorado State representative referred to a colleague as “Buckwheat” while addressing the House.
• QAnon loyalist and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene aggressively confronted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in the halls of Congress, and falsely accused her of supporting “terrorists.”
• 124 GOP-friendly retired generals and admirals released an open letter spreading the lie that President Joe Biden stole the election, while labeling him a "Marxist" and "tyrannical" threat to America.
• A Republican lawmaker in Michigan wants to force non-partisan "fact checkers" to register with the state and face $1 million fines if public officials prove "wrongful conduct" in their work.
Nervous about claims of "liberal media bias" though, the press holds back.
After witnessing Taylor accost Ocasio-Cortez this week, Washington Post reporter Marianna Sotomayor told CNN that the ugly encounter “really does speak to the polarization that exists and the tensions between both parties, Republicans, and Democrats.” [Emphasis added.] Wrong. What Taylor’s deranged behavior speaks to is a Republican Party that has torn down the guardrails of common decency.
The New York Times recently published a long piece about the deepening "era of endemic misinformation — and outright disinformation." The article highlighted obvious partisan lies pushed by right-wing media and conservatives, such as Biden's going to force Americans to eat less meat. Instead of framing the epidemic as a Republican-created one, the Times pretended the avalanche of right-wing conspiracies represent a larger, cultural issue.
The press for years has consistently misreported on the increasingly extreme nature of the Republican Party. Specifically, journalists have pressed the faulty notion that GOP members are supposedly worried about Trump. Last summer, the Times announced Republicans were “despairing” over Trump’s erratic and authoritarian behavior.
Today, the Times' coverage looks deeply naïve in retrospect. Just like when, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, the Beltway media insisted a "reckoning" was looming for the GOP over Trump. Instead, Republicans just purged Liz Cheney for criticizing his anti-democratic behavior.
All last winter, the D.C. press told us not to worry about Trump's refusal to acknowledge Biden's lopsided victory — Politico insisted it was just "bad sportsmanship."
Today, there are some glimmers of media hope. CNN on Sunday night is airing a special report, "Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP," which hopefully won't downplay the rebellion, or what's now at stake. And more news outlets are now using "lies" to describe Trump claims about the 2020 election. That language change is welcome, although long overdue.
The Beltway press has never had to cover a political party that openly embraces anti-democratic policies, such as undermining free and fair elections in America. It’s a defining media challenge.
(Photo: Saul Loeb/Getty Images)
⌨️ GOOD STUFF:
The GOP voter suppression laws that have spread across the country didn’t just randomly pop up in local statehouses.
From Mother Jones’ “Leaked Video: Dark Money Group Brags About Writing GOP Voter Suppression Bills Across the Country”:
In a private meeting last month with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”
🍑 FUN STUFF — BECAUSE WE ALL NEED A BREAK
Justin Bieber, “Peaches” (featuring Daniel Caesar, Giveon)
He gets his peaches out in Georgia, and his weed from California — that’s you all need to know about the singer’s mellow R&B jam that arrives as the backyard BBQ anthem of 2021.
You ain't sure yet, but I'm for ya
All I could want, all I can wish for
Nights alone that we miss more
And days we save as souvenirs
There's no time, I wanna make more time
And give you my whole life
🎙 Click here to listen to the music that’s been featured on PRESS RUN, via a Spotify playlist.
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The media have no idea how to cover increasingly deranged GOP
What we must recognize is that since the rise of the Tea Party, likely before, we have people in government who are seriously mentally challenged. They lack critical thinking skills and believe in conspiracies that one would raise an eyebrow if repeated by a five year old. More importantly they are cult members who throw away the truth to be obedient to one very sick man, Trump. One thing that will help correct the problem will be indictments against Trump and others in congress who blatantly fostered and enabled insurrectionists on January 6th. But each day that goes by that we don't see an indictment of a major player is a day closer to unspeakable damage to our country. How will the press respond when Arizona claims that bamboo was found in the ballots concluding that the election was stolen or God forbid Marjorie Taylor Green shoots another member of congress? Is that what the press is waiting for? That we are at this point in history with the press finally using the word "lie" speaks volumes of their compliance with the madness that is today's GOP. Trump is out of office but Trump is still in our politics and in my observant opinion, that's the way the Press wants it.
I can't recall another time in which the media went to such lengths to "understand" an emotionally damaged president. Trump's petulance - instead of being described as what it was - was sold to us as him "processing" the election loss, and not something to worry about. (Thanks, Maggie!) The media should have listened to Dr. Mary Trump and Dr. Bandy Lee, both of whom opined that Trump was mentally ill (malignant narcissism), and both of whom warned he was incapable - not unwilling, but incapable - of accepting an electoral loss. Instead the media wasted its time and failed its prime mission by fretting over how to describe the tsunami of bullsh*t that came from Trump every day. Not knowing how to cover a pathologically dishonest president is part and parcel of not knowing how to cover his pathologically dishonest enablers in the GOP.