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Democrats, simply put, are not serious people. My 2-year-old has a calmer demeanor when one of her PJ Masks characters falls somewhere she can’t quite reach it than the average Democratic journalist or Member of Congress are when discussing the Trump administration.
But unserious people with serious power are a danger. These people have votes in Congress or millions of people who believe what they say, no matter how absurd, wrong, or biased they may be. When they add their twist to a story, it has the ability to become “truth” to their audience. That’s a lot of power.
You expect this from elected Democrats. They’re politicians. But journalists are supposed to be different.
So when the New York Times reports on a Department of Justice probe of the origins of the Russia hoax morphing into a criminal investigation, how it is framed is telling, and as important as the story itself. The way they chose to frame it was curious, to say the least.
“For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it,” the Times story opens, as if a closed investigation could not be a hoax or how the whole thing came into being should not even be wondered about because it was over.
The “news” story continues, “The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies.”
“Likely to raise alarms” with who? Why? Who, after the promises made that were exposed as lies by the Mueller probe, wouldn’t want to know how it happened, if only to avoid it happening again?
The fact of the matter is these self-appointed arbiters of truth have no interest in knowing how this fraud began. How it was the spy apparatus that is supposed to be aimed at the rest of the world to keep us safe was directed at American citizens, something expressly forbidden without extreme cause by the laws that govern it.
The job of journalists is supposed to be to gather as much information as possible and disseminate it to the public. They’re supposed to seek as much of it out as they can for that very purpose. Yet, when it comes to anything remotely related to the origins of the Russia investigation, the curiosity that serves as the cornerstone of what their profession is supposed to be, disappears.
“Serious journalist” Andrea Mitchell, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News and also has a show on MSNBC where she opines on domestic politics, opened her discussion on the investigation by declaring the concept“tracks closely” with what is being discussed “in right-wing media.” Again, curious, narrative-enforcing framing.
Mitchell then brought on two guests, both former Obama administration officials (for balance, naturally) who proceeded to dismiss the idea as a “debunked conspiracy theory” and lamented how those being questioned would have to hire lawyers because it will cost them money. Mitchell has expressed no such concern for any of the people who’ve had to drain their savings while being dragged before the Special Counsel and Congress countless times for the sin of having worked for the Trump campaign.
The truth is no news outlet is interested in what happened because of who it happened to. If it were done to Barack Obama, no other story would be covered until they got to the bottom of it. But because it was done by Barack Obama, it might as well not have happened.
Donald Trump and his supporters are not worthy of due process or Constitutional protections in the minds of the left. When he calls them “fake news” it’s a “threat to democracy,” when they spend years calling him the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, it’s just a day that ends in “y.”
It’s not that journalists are incurious about how the Russia hoax originated, it’s that they’re terrified people will find out. They’re afraid it will implicate their friends, colleagues, and heroes; that it will expose them further as complicit in largest fraud American political history.
Media Democrats are not serious people, but they do have power. And there are millions of Americans who will believe any and everything someone like Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd, or Jim Acosta say, no matter how corrupt, self-serving, divorced from reality, or anti-journalistic it is. That’s why, even though they’re unserious people, they have to be taken seriously.