For the past several decades and certainly for the last two presidential elections, the mainstream media have been happy to pee on their own leg and tell themselves — and their loyal subjects — that it’s raining. Initially, it appeared they were prepared to do this again: to take whatever steps were necessary to get Hillary Clinton elected president. Lately, however, cracks in the veneer have begun to emerge.
This is not say that the MSM have grown bullish or even mildly supportive toward Donald Trump; they haven’t. Rather, I submit that some members of the elite press have begun to cool at the prospect of trying to make this particular Clinton smell like a rose.
Take a look at the headlines. The New York Times ran an item Saturday titled “Where has Hillary Clinton been? Ask the ultrarich.” In it, writers Amy Chozick and Jonathan Martin note somewhat caustically:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
While Mrs. Clinton has faced criticism for her failure to hold a news conference for months, she has fielded hundreds of questions from the ultrarich in places like the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley.
Articles like this don’t exactly help Clinton promote her populist message. Neither does a piece on Friday from CNBC titled “The 5 most outrageous things Hillary Clinton said in her FBI interview.” The story opens with a grim reminder that all is not well in Hillaryville:
Hillary Clinton was already having a bad week as polls show Donald Trump closing the gap between them and, in a few polls, even pulling ahead. It got worse Friday after the FBI released Clinton’s answers to investigators’ questions over her use of a private email server, revealing some pretty damaging responses from the former Secretary of State.
Glenn Kesssler, the Washington Post’s “fact checker,” has a similar column out this morning. The title? “Recidivism Watch: Clinton’s repeated claim that the FBI said her answers were ‘truthful’.” The article opens this way:
One would think the talking points would change after receiving Four Pinocchios from The Washington Post Fact Checker, “Pants on Fire” from PolitiFact and “false” from FactCheck.org.
But, nope, Clinton fell back on a claim that has been roundly debunked by fact checkers.
Finally here’s ABC’s Martha Raddatz exasperatingly grilling Clinton’s vice presidential nominee, Tim Kaine on what the FBI notes revealed and asking, “Don’t the American people deserve a better explanation?”
https://youtu.be/bmUNp86Pi9M
These last three articles highlight the chief reason some establishment news outlets are no longer plumping for Clinton. It’s hard to overlook the constantly changing nature of her explanation of what she knew and when she knew it. In the notes released by the FBI, she said the words “I don’t recall” on 39 separate occasions when queried on her handling of classified documents. A year earlier, she uttered the words, “I’m very familiar with the importance of treating classified information as it should be with great care.”
The MSM could ignore all of this, as they did with reports of Barack Obama’s various socialist and black nationalist mentors. But supporting a pathological liar, and one who lies badly at that, makes them look foolish.
I believe as we draw closer to Nov. 6, the Kesslers and Chozicks will revert to their previous form, but time will tell.
