As readers of this blog are well aware, Hair Drumpf held a press conference earlier this week, supposedly to address his veterans' fundraising and where the money went. The event turned into a bizarre rant against the media instead.
Was he playing the press like a fiddle again in order to distract from another horribly damaging story -- his Trump University court case which is fast exposing Trump as nothing more than one giant con man who separates poor suckers from their wallets?
Trump's constant lying and very bad week was the topic of discussion during the panel segment on this Friday's Real Time. Host Bill Maher noted that there seems to be one set of rules for how they treat Democrats and the standard they're held to, and another one for Republicans, with Trump orbiting in his own universe of lies outside all standards of qualified candidacy.
Bill Maher Blames Cable News and Megyn Kelly for Trump: ‘They Are Traitors to Journalism’:
Bill Maher is always mad as hell, but this time his ire is aimed squarely at talk news—the for-profit enterprise that, he claims, has led to Donald Trump’s precipitous rise from fired Celebrity Apprentice reality show host to presumptive Republican nominee for president. [...]
On his HBO program Real Time, Maher said that the TV news media has a clear “profit bias” which has led to them providing ‘round-the-clock coverage of Trump due to the ratings he generates, which in turn increases his popularity. But he also warned his viewers to not conflate talk news with the print media, which has been very critical of Trump from day one—including a recent report in The Washington Post busting Trump for not donating the money he’d promised to veterans’ groups.
“That’s a profit bias,” said Maher Friday evening. “The media isn’t liberal, they’re just biased towards money. When [Trump] attacked the media in that press conference, I think he did something that was unfair…He lumped the print media in with the television media. He was exposed by The Washington Post. That’s an actual newspaper. There are still a few left. I have a lot of quibbles with The New York Times, but they’re still a newspaper. And then he goes after Jim Acosta and somebody else who works in TV news. That is a whole different kettle of fish. They are vapid ratings whores. They are traitors to journalism.”
The Daily Beast’s own editor-in-chief John Avlon, one of the guests on the panel, further reiterated how important the Fourth Estate is in covering a truth-bending demagogue like Donald J. Trump.
“It’s about Donald Trump and the blizzard of lies strategy that he’s deployed from the beginning. If somebody lies every day, multiple times a day, it stops being noteworthy and the process of holding him accountable becomes more difficult,” said Avlon. “Which is why it’s our job in the news, more than anything, to call bullshit on it.”
“We at The Daily Beast have been tough on Donald Trump from the beginning, unapologetically,” he added. “They’ve threatened our reporters; we’ve published the threats because we will not play that game. We will stand up to bullies, bigots, and hypocrites like Donald Trump every day.”
Another panelist, Reason editor-in-chief Matt Welch, singled out the performance of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly as someone in TV news who’s done a commendable job of taking Trump to task—which lit a fire under Maher.
“Megyn Kelly? Excuse me, can we go through this bullshit for a second?” said Maher. “Megyn Kelly asked [Trump] one tough question at the debate—one tough question—and then the stupid media anoints her as a genius because she asked one tough question. For months, he’s just belittling her: she’s on the rag, she’s an idiot, she’s a bimbo, her ratings are terrible. Then, she comes begging him for an interview where she says, ‘Nothing is gonna be out of bounds.’ You know what was out of bounds? Journalism. She didn’t ask one tough question. It was a profile in cowardice.”
Amen to that. As Ellen discussed here about Kelly:
Megyn Kelly’s widely-panned interview with Donald Trump may have finally awakened the media to the Megyn Kelly we have long known.
Ever since she began sparring with Donald Trump, the mainstream media has been fawning over her as some kind of 21st century, feminist Edward R. Murrow. Vanity Fair titled its recent, glowing profile of her, “Blowhards, Beware: Megyn Kelly Will Slay You Now.”
And it was precisely that myth, which Kelly has carefully cultivated, that was part of her undoing. [...]
But Kelly’s show proved that she’s no Oprah, Rose or Walters, at least not yet. In fact, Kelly came across as mainstream Fox News. [...]
This is exactly what we’ve been trying to get across to people ever since Kelly began promoting herself as some kind of different. She’s good at creating YouTube moments that make her seem independent and journalistic but she has always been a Fox in sheep’s clothing.
Maher nailed CNN and MSNBC as well. CNN can't run a panel segment talking about Hair Drumpf without at least one insane supporter of his on for "balance." and MSNBC has a three hour Trump love-fest every morning with his BFF's Morning Blow and his abused TV wife Mika. And don't even get me started on all of the rallies they've covered live on MSNBC. That network's fawning coverage of Trump is why I don't keep bricks near my television.
