The media censors Trump because they are afraid that if people who have common sense actually hear what he has to say without his words being parsed, they may actually agree with it.
Last week, TIME published a lengthy front cover feature titled “How Far Trump Would Go,” in which the author Eric Cortellessa warns the American public without any sense of irony that a second Trump term, should he win re-election in November, will be the “end of our democracy” as we know it.
The editors at TIME were probably not gleeful about putting Trump back on the cover of their coveted magazine, but given that he is currently leading Joe Biden in the latest RCP Polling Average—and has been since September 12 of last year—the magazine could no longer ignore the very real possibility that Trump just might end up back in the White House come January 2025.
Cortellessa promises us in the beginning of the 26-minute read, which was written after two interviews with Trump as well as discussions with more than 12 of his closest advisors, that this particular article would be different from the typical leftist media hit-pieces that cover the former president.
“I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words,” Cortellessa writes.
But instead of accurately reporting on Trump’s vision for a second term, Cortellessa splices and dices his piece like a heavily edited 60 Minutes interview—taking Trump’s responses out of context, selectively choosing what quotes to include and which ones to omit—all the while trying to make him appear as belligerent, unhinged and authoritarian as possible.
“To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring ‘the end of our democracy,’ says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, ‘and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order,’ Cortellessa writes.
This “threat to our democracy” ritual is beginning to feel as tiresome and as old as the city of Rome. Every Republican president dating back to Richard Nixon has supposedly been a “threat to our democracy,” which really means they’re a threat to the left’s power and disastrous agenda for America.
At this point, it is pretty much assumed that whenever the leftist corporate media covers Trump, they will deliberately misquote him or distort anything he says. Credibility is no longer of any importance to them. Convincing the American public at large that he’s an evil monster is the only thing that matters.
But in a rare act of transparency, TIME decided to include the entire transcript in the online publication of the article, which only further illustrated their lack of journalistic integrity.
Cortellessa, as is typical of the legacy media, fixates on the events of January 6, as though that is top of mind for a truck driver living in Dayton who is wondering how he will pay his bills since the price of gas and groceries has dramatically increased since Biden became president—or for the factory worker in Rochester who is wondering if artificial intelligence will soon put him out of a job.
Cortellessa also tries to make Trump’s stance on illegal immigration and abortion appear as radical as possible, and he mischaracterizes Trump’s response to a racially loaded question—in an attempt to paint him as a bigot. He misrepresents how Trump would use the Justice Department if he’s reelected and he exaggerates Trump’s response about the possibility of political violence after the November election.
Here is how Cortellessa described Trump’s thoughts on January 6:
“The events of Jan. 6, during which a pro-Trump mob attacked the center of American democracy in an effort to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, was a profound stain on his legacy. Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. ‘I call them the J-6 patriots,’ he says. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, “Yes, absolutely,” Cortellessa writes.
Here is a more complete answer that Trump gave during the same interview—but was conveniently omitted from the piece—when he was asked if he would pardon those who have been held in prison for the events of January 6:
“It’s a two-tier system. Because when I look at Portland, when I look at Minneapolis, where they took over police precincts and everything else, and went after federal buildings, when I look at other situations that were violent, and where people were killed, nothing happened to them,” Trump said. “If somebody was evil and bad, I would look at that differently. But many of those people went in, many of those people were ushered in. You see it on tape, the police are ushering them in. They’re walking with the police.”
As the full response makes clear, Trump was merely pointing out that violent Black Lives Matter protestors who caused billions of dollars in property damage and, in some cases, murdered citizens were treated with kid gloves by the Justice Department, while those who trespassed the U.S. Capitol Building and committed nonviolent offenses were given overly harsh sentences and treated as domestic terrorists by the very same Justice Department. But apparently Cortellessa wants us to believe that every January 6 trespasser should spend the remainder of their days rotting in a prison cell without due process.
TIME also wants us to believe that Trump’s immigration proposals are a “radical design for presidential power.” Apparently deporting millions of illegal immigrants who had no right to be here in the first place, reinstituting the highly successful Remain in Mexico policy, as well as implementing Title 42, which makes it easier for border patrol officials to expel illegal migrants, is a grave threat to our republic.
How dare Trump put the rights of American citizens first!
When it comes to the right to life, Trump is apparently a dictator because he declined to “commit to vetoing any additional federal [abortion] restrictions if they came to his desk” and because he believes “abortion policies should be left to the states.” In other words, now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned and the power has been returned to the states to implement their own abortion laws, Trump is now being vilified for following the rule of law and not intervening, whereas Biden has said he will sue red states whose abortion policies he disagrees with.
But apparently that’s not executive overreach and a “threat to our democracy.”
And according to TIME, when Trump says unequivocally that there should not be any discrimination against anyone because of their race, or because he has made law and order and safety and security a centerpiece of his campaign—well, apparently that stance is akin to Jim Crow.
“To critics, Trump’s preoccupation with crime is a racial dog whistle. In polls, large numbers of his supporters have expressed the view that antiwhite racism now represents a greater problem in the U.S. than the systemic racism that has long afflicted Black Americans,” Cortellessa writes. “When I ask if he agrees, Trump does not dispute this position. “There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country,” he tells TIME, “and that can’t be allowed either.” In a second term, advisers say, a Trump Administration would rescind Biden’s Executive Orders designed to boost diversity and racial equity.”
In TIME’s warped reality, the DEI initiatives that have become prevalent in our society in recent years and the EO’s put forth by the Biden White House, which make it easier to discriminate against white applicants when it comes to employment, school enrollment, or granting white business owners a loan—apparently, none of that exists or is problematic.
And for the record, during Trump’s presidency, he made a permanent commitment of $255 million in annual funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, but go ahead, keep telling us he’s a racist.
Cortellessa also feigns alarm that Trump “would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding.” Never mind that Biden’s Department of Justice has indicted his leading political opponent multiple times for imaginary crimes. Never mind that Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis and her romantic partner met with the Biden White House twice before she decided to charge Trump with a bogus crime. Never mind that Biden has weaponized the Department of Justice to go after parents who disagree with racist anti-white lessons and radical gender ideologies being taught in schools. But that is of no concern to TIME.
Finally, Cortellessa wraps up his hit piece by preposterously insinuating that Trump is promoting political violence if he loses the election.
“Trump does not dismiss the possibility of political violence around the election. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he tells TIME. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.”
Actually, what Trump said in the more complete answer from the transcript about political violence was, “I don’t think we’re going to have that. I think we’re going to win. And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election. I don’t believe they’ll be able to do the things that they did the last time. I don’t think they’ll be able to get away with it. And if that’s the case, we’re gonna win in record-setting fashion.”
It is becoming increasingly clearer that the media does not censor Trump because he supposedly says things that are “untrue,” which, for the record, is still not grounds for censorship. If that were the case, Biden should be censored practically every time he speaks and reinvents history.
But on the contrary, the media censors Trump because they are afraid that if people who have common sense actually hear what he has to say without his words being parsed, they may actually agree with it.
And they can’t let that happen.
David Keltz is the author of “The Campaign of his Life” and “Media Bias in the Trump Presidency and the Extinction of the Conservative Millennial.” His writing has been published in The American Spectator, RealClearPolitics, American Greatness, the Federalist, the American Thinker, and the New York Daily News, among other publications.