Trump, Bannon try to change the story: journos are leaking traitors
Donald Trump had a Twitter tantrum over a blockbuster NY Times exposé overnight – but it is calculated to deflect from what is shaping up to be one of the biggest government and political scandals in the nation’s history:
The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017
Translation: “I am desperate to delegitimize journalists and the organizations for which they work.”
Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?).Just like Russia
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017
Translation: “Forget the scandal of my campaign being in constant contact with Russian intelligence apparatchiks and Putin’s operators. Look at the awful whistlebl… er, leaks! They’re BAD!”
Meanwhile, Sydney Ember, the Times’s media analyst, uses a “fair and balanced” frame in a new piece on how new vs. old media is covering Flynnghazi – but brings President Bannon’s Breitbart News into the mix in a big way:
It is not unusual for news media to promote different story angles. And the division between left-leaning and right-leaning news organizations is certainly not new. But the rift between the mainstream media and more partisan news organizations has grown starker in the nearly four weeks since Mr. Trump took office, reflecting a widening political and ideological rift. …
Americans who get their information predominantly from Breitbart News, a right-wing news and opinion site, for instance, or from the conservative Fox News are getting a very different version of the news from Americans who read The Washington Post or watch CNN. …
“Democrats are clamoring for a deeper investigation of Russian ties to Trump,” the article said. “But the more serious question is whether our nation’s intelligence services were involved in what amounts to political espionage against the newly elected government.”
That’s the gambit: make victims of hard-right propaganda believe journalists into seditionist spies when in fact the tag applies qoute aptly to Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and Roger Stone.
‘Nuff said.
