Why did President Donald Trump ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House? The better question is: What took so long?
But Trump made his point. The man is angry at the blatantly biased and Trump-despising legacy media. He blames them for his poor poll numbers. His bitterness is more than justified.
The economy is far better than reported. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model currently estimates third-quarter growth at an annualized rate of approximately 5.1%, up from an earlier estimate of 4.4%. And even at today’s elevated gasoline prices, the cost of gas as a percentage of income remains far smaller than during earlier price shocks.
Inflation is lower than the Biden average. The official poverty rate is the lowest on record. The stock market has been up, and 401(k)s are fatter. A recent survey of CEOs finds confidence in the economy higher than it’s been in years — with 73% expecting hiring to remain the same or to be increased.
Crime is down. The deportation of criminal illegal aliens, argues the Trump administration, is likely a contributing factor.
The administration says its military campaign has pushed Iran further away from developing a nuclear weapon. Military recruitment is up. DEI is in retreat. NATO allies are finally upping defense spending as a percentage of their GDP, after former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama unsuccessfully urged it to do so.
There’s a lot of good news.
This stands in stark contrast with the breathless drum-beating coverage of the Russia-Trump collusion hoax, the first and biggest media-clamped weight on Trump’s ankle. And when the hoax unraveled — and the bad actors were exposed — the media was far less interested.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the opposition research that produced the discredited Steele dossier. Obama was later briefed on intelligence alleging that Clinton had approved a plan to tie Trump to Russia and divert attention from her email controversy. The Washington Post, not exactly pro-Trump, in 2017, wrote:
“The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.”
The collusion probe began before the dossier, but the dossier later gave the investigation a lot of fuel, particularly for the Carter Page FISA surveillance applications.
According to documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, preelection intelligence reports emphasized Russia’s efforts to disrupt the election and undermine confidence in the democratic process, without concluding that Moscow’s objective was to elect Trump. After Trump’s unexpected victory, however, Obama ordered a new assessment. This time it concluded Putin had developed a preference for Trump and wanted him to win.
The Media Research Center said 92% of the evaluative coverage of Trump 2.0 during his first 100 days by ABC’s “World News Tonight,” the “CBS Evening News” and “NBC Nightly News” was negative. And much of this was after Trump closed the southern border, when for years the Biden administration claimed it was closed.
During the Biden administration when more than 2.75 million people had entered the country illegally during the 12 months ending September 2022, a December 2022 Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll of registered voters asked, “How many border crossings by illegal immigrants do you think are occurring each year?” Fifty-five percent estimated 500,000 or fewer, and the largest group of voters believed annual illegal border crossings numbered between 100,000 and 250,000. Ill-informed?
It never ends.
Nicolle Wallace, an MS NOW host, last week played an excerpt of Vice President JD Vance imploring voters to keep the Republican congressional majorities. Wallace, laughing, then said, “What I love is, like, give us two more years of rounding and — rounding up and shooting Americans in the streets, stealing all of your money, and destroying the economy. Nobody wants that.”
It boggles the mind how much time the media spend on the inconsequential — such as Trump attaching his name to the Kennedy Center — compared with how little they spend examining how close Iran came to producing enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb.
Words fail. Trump fumes. Understandably so.
His ban may not survive a court challenge. But the record of overwhelmingly negative media coverage remains open for all to see.
Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an “Elderado,” visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on X @larryelder. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
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