On behalf of freedom loving Americans everywhere, a great big thank you to the members of the corrupt American media. You contributed in a very big way to Donald Trump’s re-election by doing everything you could think of to doom his candidacy. It is such a sweet irony that you helped him while trying to hurt him. Do you even realize the outsized role you played? In the days leading up to the election you were frenzied and desperate as it became increasingly likely he would win. The more you tried to put your thumb on the scale to destroy Donald Trump, the more the people doubled down in support of him. We don’t believe a word you say.
Journalism in America is a failed profession. You have abandoned your duty to be guardians of the public interest in favor of political agendas. You have become part of the political elite you are supposed to be policing. Your dishonesty and your skill at lying have you on the road to self-destruction. The American people will punish you severely by making you irrelevant.
You were unsuccessful in influencing the outcome of the 2024 presidential election in favor of Kamala Harris but it was not for lack of trying.
An analysis by the Media Research Center of the “major news networks” coverage of Trump and Harris since July showed 78% positive coverage for Harris and 85% negative coverage for Trump. The topics you selected for coverage were not driven by their importance to the overall welfare of the American people but rather with an eye on what would be helpful or harmful to the candidates.
You show no interest in serious investigative reporting. You protected Harris from having to explain her radical changes in policy from her 20 years in public office to candidate for President. You laid low rather than hound her for the unscripted interviews any credible candidate should be expected to provide. You ignored allegations of her plagiarism and her husband’s corroborated physical abuse of a former girlfriend.
You never bothered to delve into the meaning of “concerned about the state of democracy” on the part of the electorate. If you had you would have uncovered that for the majority of Americans this concern was about losing our freedom through extreme liberal ideology not the tyranny of Donald Trump.
You pushed the idea that women cared more about abortion than all of the other issues impacting their lives and would be voting for Harris to protect their “reproductive freedom.”
You did all you could to amplify the significance of issues that proved to be nonissues to the electorate such as the distasteful joke about Puerto Rico told by a comedian at a Trump rally. You tried to get the public to believe this was going to negate the entire Hispanic vote for Trump. Instead, according to exit polls, he got 46% of the Hispanic vote, the most for a Republican since the 1970’s. It didn’t seem to occur to you how racist your assumption was that Hispanic people are such simpletons they would let a bad joke take precedence over their thoughtful evaluation of which candidate will best lead the country in ways that matter to them.
In a desperate attempt to revive the “Access Hollywood’ tapes, a videorecorded lewd conversation Trump had with another man about women released in a failed attempt to end his 2016 presidential campaign, Dana Bash of CNN “reported” that young women in their 20’s were getting their first exposure to Trump’s disrespect of women. Her attempt to make it an issue in 2024 fell flat.
If I had to select your most despicable betrayal of the American people it would have to be your pattern of lying through knowingly creating false narratives using a wide array of tactics. When a poll came out on the Sunday before the election showing Harris with a 3-point lead over Trump in Iowa, you treated it as a major shift in momentum and didn’t bother to report a poll that same day that had Trump up by 10 in Iowa. In the end, he won Iowa by 13 points.
In an interview the week before the election, Trump made the point that Liz Cheney and others like her are war hawks. They sit comfortably in Washington while they send other people’s sons and daughters off to war. He suggested she ought to be given a rifle and sent off to battle to have 9 rifles trained on her face to see if this moderates her enthusiasm for war. This was quickly translated into Trump calling for Cheney to be executed. It was repeated over and over across the mass media. Shameful lies such as Trump encouraged Americans to inject themselves with bleach to fight COVID; Trump said Nazis marching in Charlottesville were among the good people on both sides of the confederate monument dispute; Trump predicted a bloodbath if he lost the election, implying another January 6 riot; and Trump has promised to govern as an authoritarian from day one are among the many repeatedly pushed by you or unchecked by you when repeated by others.
Your postmortem in the days following the election is not encouraging. The narratives being pushed include racism and gender bias are the reasons Harris lost; messaging and tactics are the Democrat’s biggest problems; and Trump was marketing fear and anger and fear and anger won. You are right back to work trying to undermine Trump’s success. Mass deportation fear mongering is dominating the reporting.
This is a call to action to the rare and nearly invisible principled journalists who are disgusted by what your profession has become.
The architects of freedom made a free press a cornerstone of the republic and charged it with championing the truth. America needs you to find your voice and the courage to rise up out of the ashes of failure to become what our founders intended you to be. Follow the truth where it leads. Purge yourselves of all of the dishonest, arrogant, know-nothings who populate your newsrooms and anchor desks. Earn our trust.
Trump’s landslide victory is a tremendous opportunity for self-reflection and rebuilding. If you ignore it, you do so at your own peril.
