Watching local news while on a trip this past Sunday morning, I noticed something deeply disturbing about a story on the January 6 insurrection.
Not only did the newscaster not mention the words "Trump" or "Republican" once, the video package running while the host was speaking did not show a single Trump sign or flag. In the video above, from this morning, I count two Trump flags total. And the newscaster, again, does not say "Trump" or "Republican" at all.
I believe this is intentional, folks.
Like the Tea Party of 2009 and the anti-1619 Project/Critical Race Theory freakout of today, the nation is dealing with a critical mass of people who do not want to have ANY responsibility for anything bad or embarrassing from the past. Listen to them: " I'm not a George W. Bush voter, I'm an independent Tea Party conservative! I'm not responsible for slavery, so therefore I'm not responsible for anything racist anywhere, and how dare you teach my little innocent white grade-schooler anything that might make her feel bad! People storming the Capitol were tourists, I mean Antifa, I mean not armed!"
And I don't see one Trump flag among the lot of them? Really. Because "the news" edited them out.
We are in the middle of yet another re-write of history. As I wrote the summer before Trump was elected, the media will do anything to make sure Republicans are not held accountable for their crimes.
Donald Trump lies about a lot of things, but he is not lying when he says he received more Republican Primary votes than any other candidate in US history. That statistic is skewed by how many Republicans voted "Not Trump," but the fact that the race boiled down to Trump versus not-Trump is not helpful to the "Trumpism" argument. Republican voters selected Trump as their candidate, in state after state after state.
The beltway news media is terrified that the Republican Party will be forever tarnished by this Trump candidacy. Why? Because Trump-as-Republican busts open their "both sides" myth, that "both sides" of the political spectrum are equally bad, equally wrong and right, equally to be blamed for the "mess" in Washington.
Both-siderism protects the Beltway's need for an election horserace, as well as a "view from nowhere" in which the media is outside the race altogether and just an "observer" of "the process." But both-siderism picks a side: the side that is willing to lie repeatedly to win elections and policy points.
Welp, that "the Republican Party will be forever tarnished by this Trump candidacy" is a ship that has sailed, or is it? If the media continues to report on the "January 6 insurrection" as if it has nothing to do with Republicans, then the Republican mob can re-invent itself for white nationalist ends again and again with no consequence, masquerading as a brand new political "movement" every time.
Tea Party, MAGA, QAnon, they are all Republicans. Never forget, even as the "news" whitewashes their participation in the destruction of democracy itself.
Photo of USA Today page 1 in a kiosk on January 8, via Unsplash
