If Donald Trump wins in November, it could well be because the media hasn’t done its job.
That’s according to On The Media’s Bob Garfield, who accuses the press of malpractice in its reporting on Trump. The piece is titled, “How Not to Normalize Trump” and it’s well worth the six minutes of your time to listen.
After playing a clip from NBC’s Meet the Press in which Chuck Todd asks Trump if he isn’t flip-flopping on his tax policy, Garfield notes there are much bigger issues surrounding Trump, and he plays some of the greatest hits of his outrageous campaign record so far. Garfield concludes:
…his supposed courageous candor is contaminated with the most cowardly hate speech: racism, xenophobia, misogyny, incitement, breath-taking ignorance on issues both foreign and domestic, and a nuclear recklessness reminiscent of a raving meth head with a machete on an episode of, “Cops.”
The man is a menace of historic proportions. So who the Chuck Todd cares about his tax proposals? It’s like asking Charles Manson about his driving record.
Garfield notes that the even as the press golly-gees at how “presidential” Trump has become — he’s begun reading from a teleprompter!– they lift him up and legitimize him as a candidate. While it’s the media’s job to report on Trump, he says, what they are doing is “normalizing” him and clearing a path to his victory.
The true story, Garfield says, is not where Trump stands on tax policy, but who Trump is. That, he says, needs to remain the focus of every interview and Trump’s voluminous press coverage.
Why is no one talking about the investigation done by the Telegraph into one of
Trump’s deals, illegal and deprived the government of tens of thousands of dollars in taxes.
Huffpost is now talking about it.