The (at least) tacit conspiracy between the Clinton campaign and the FBI to smear Donald Trump was something that cannot be tolerated in a free and democratic society. Law enforcement agencies can never be permitted to act on behalf of one presidential candidate and against another. That much is clear.
But the best efforts of the co-conspirators would have come to naught, had the press not done its part. No smear campaign accomplishes anything if it goes unreported. The goal of the dirty trick was to damage Trump at the polls, a goal unattainable without its active promotion by the press.
The eagerness with which the leftist press lapped up the lies served by the Clinton campaign and the FBI strongly suggests something even more sinister – that the campaign knew it could rely on the press to go along with the scam. The decision to smear Trump had to be based in part on the assumption that the press would run with Clinton’s claims, that it would avoid its duty of accurately informing the public. An inquisitive and skeptical press would have posed a threat to the necessary secrecy. Plainly, Clinton had no concerns about getting caught.
And of course, she was right. In the event, the leftist press appeared so thrilled with the claims, that it both repeated them as true and even expanded on them. So, for example, NBC and MSNBC serial opiner John Heileman openly speculated that House member Devin Nunes was, “a Russian agent running the House Intel Committee on the Republican side[.]” He did so because Nunes dared to question the narrative of Trump/Russia collusion. Needless to say, Nunes has subsequently been proven right, but the fact that the leftist press could suggest with a straight face that an elected member of Congress was a “Russian agent” shows the extent to which it was willing to trash anyone who questioned the false narrative confected by the Clinton campaign.
It’s a scandal possibly even greater than that of the original Clinton-FBI conspiracy. From the founding of this country, we’ve understood that a key part of any democracy is a press that holds to account the wealthy and powerful. It was assumed, by the likes of Madison and Hamilton, that a free press, would exercise that function on behalf of the people, the country, freedom and democracy. To say the least, when the press spreads disinformation to smear a popular candidate for the presidency, when it ignores the truth, democracy is in grave danger. And it is.
Now, some may argue that the MSM’s treatment of “Russiagate,” while clearly a failure of the press, is a far cry from wholesale violation of its constitutional role of “speaking truth to power.”
And that could be an arguable point except for one thing. Trump’s popularity, the reason he won the Republican nomination in 2016, won the presidency, showed well in 2020 and remains popular enough to possibly win again, exists because he presents himself as an opponent of the governing status quo, including the national security state. His whole appeal was and is that he questions elite rule that’s held sway at least since 1945, what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex,” what C. Wright Mills called the “Power Elite” and that now includes everyday surveillance of We the People and the institutional trashing of dissent. Regardless of the reality of Donald Trump, his populist appeal is that he cares about everyday Americans who, for too long have been ignored and taken for granted by policies that do us little good and much harm. The grand conspiracy against Trump, whatever you think of him, was and is anti-populist and pro-statist elite power.
That’s not just my opinion. Listen to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer on MSNBC pointing out (all too presciently) that Trump’s taking on the intelligence community was foolish because “they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.” It’s a remarkable statement, both true and frank. No one, including the president, crosses the CIA, the NSA or the FBI. They will use their awesome power to take down anyone who questions certain basics.
In the case of Donald Trump, they did, and do, and none of it was possible without the eager participation of most of the national and local press.
It will continue. The national security state will continue to operate with complete impunity in large part because the leftist press will continue to treat its nefarious behavior as non-news. In fact, that behavior is becoming both easier and more flagrant with each passing day.
Consider, for example, the ease with which the Biden Administration enlisted the services of 51 current and former employees of the national security state for the purpose of debunking the Hunter Biden laptop story that threatened Joe Biden’s ascendance to the Oval Office. The New York Post’s reporting, coming as it did shortly before the 2020 election, threatened Biden’s chances of winning what was a neck-and-neck race.
But, unlike in 2016, when Clinton had to concoct a Rube Goldberg-ish scheme to recruit the assistance of the FBI, four years later the Biden campaign had only to make a single telephone call and suggest the fix, – the letter signed by those intelligence operatives claiming the laptop story “had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation” – that was promptly forthcoming.
As the Wall Street Journal revealed, an interim report by two House committees,
tells the sordid story of the letter, beginning with a call from Biden campaign official Antony Blinken to former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell three days after the New York Post published its laptop scoop. Mr. Morell told the committees that Mr. Blinken wanted his “reaction” to the laptop news, but another signer said Mr. Morell put it to him bluntly: the Biden campaign “asked” for the letter.
Mr. Morell says he scurried to help because he wanted Joe Biden “to win the election[.]”
Now a simple request or even just a hint from a favored candidate sends present and former intelligence officials into action confecting a lie to help him “win the election.” And again the leftist media are ever ready to repeat the lie and demean anyone who questions it.
From Day One in this country, the news media were never supposed to be an arm of government. But that is what they’ve openly become and our freedom and democracy are in danger because of it.
Naturally, the Founding Fathers never foresaw social media that’s become, in some ways, as powerful a force as the established, corporate kind. And, as the Twitter Files have shown, social media platforms are as eager as the legacy press to purvey disinformation on behalf of state power and against the very concept of an informed public.
More on that next time.
