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Money and Media, But Her Emails [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-08-14  

After the story emerged that the Donald Trump for President campaign was hacked, I waited for the endless and daily release of emails and private correspondence. The print and television press were giddy about the release of a series of emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. Like a 1930s Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon movie serial, the press had us tuning in weekly and regaling us with recipe exchange stories between the campaign and Clinton campaign chair Leon Podesta. Her like of her grandchild and, for heaven’s sake, campaign strategy to beat her opponent was deemed appalling. Now, the press is sitting on hacked information about Mr. Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his running mate. Amazingly, this sudden discovery of ethics did not seem to apply to Democrats.

In a PBS News article, the authenticity of the documents was confirmed by both the Washington Post and Politico. The New York Times acknowledged receipt of the information but gave vague allusions to the hacked information, writing, “Like many such vetting documents,” The Times wrote of the Vance report, “they contained past statements with the potential to be embarrassing or damaging, such as Mr. Vance’s remarks casting aspersions on Mr. Trump.” The TV media is just as complicit, televising Trump’s flurry of lies for hours on end at his rallies, tepidly reading off a fact check of his lies afterward. The country and the world—for ten years, have been exposed to the litany of Trump’s rehashed lies, and not being prepared—at this point is inexcusable.

The chyron

The media claims they are searching for a way to check Mr. Trump in real-time, and the conundrum confounds them. After years of hearing about the stolen election, Northern Triangle countries emptying their asylum and jails and sending them to the U.S., and the ever-present lie of Democrats condoning infanticide, it would be easy to have that scrolling informational message at the bottom of the screen—a chyron—at the ready. Sixty lawsuits have never yielded one iota of truth to his stolen election claim. Mr. Trump has never produced one scintilla of proof about foreign jails and asylum being emptied. Infanticide is a crime, and no Democrat, including the former Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, has ever advocated for it. The truth is not buried like the Dead Sea Scrolls but easily and quickly Googled. Donald Trump stole government documents and used a lie-filled fallacy, claiming the Presidential Records Act permitted him.

In 1978, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which states that any records created or received by the President as part of his constitutional, statutory, or ceremonial duties are the property of the United States government and will be managed by NARA at the end of the administration.

The Presidential Records Act (PRA) changed the legal status of Presidential and Vice-Presidential materials. Under the PRA, the official records of the President and his staff are owned by the United States, not by the President.

It is incredible that when he says this, which he has done repeatedly in press conferences, interviews, and press gaggles, a reporter does not just pull out the text of the PRA and read it to him. Failures like that and many others embolden him. So, instead of cowering away from the hacked emails, how about a return to the fairness doctrine? Or is the allure of an electoral ratings horse race, clicks, and money too much for editorial integrity to handle?

Vote Against Guns

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