CNN/Journalism Doesn’t Get Everyone ALREADY Knows Trump!

It’s Saturday now and CNN & Anderson Cooper are still facing serious blowback for their platforming Trump to spout lie after lie to a friendly audience. I’ll get to Cooper’s “silo” analogy, one for which he’s taking increasing heat including it seems from a whole lot of people within CNN.  But let’s backtrack.

I wrote yesterday about it’s makeup of Republicans and “Independents (who’d voted for Trump!) which in the leadup to the event I don’t recall being talked about much.  Or maybe I missed that point being emphasized enough for it to stick in my mind.  Regardless, what matters is that before Trump came out CNN put its thumb on the scale to ensure Trump would have a supportive environment.  The crowd got if not marching orders then at least instructions – NO booing or other negative stuff, but it was okay to applaud but please keep support to applause.  Like a Trump friendly crowd would keep their mouths shut when he gave them a chance to say mock a woman he’d just been found by a jury to have sexually assaulted.  And defamed.  As we know the crowd got vocal and with more than mere clapping!

It was quite the show.  Lie, after lie after lie with all the pretty trappings of a real journalist conducting a real Town Hall like we’ve gotten used to seeing.  CNN’s host tried some pushback but she never had a chance against Trump.  Especially not in front of an audience prepped by her own producers to show support for Trump and if anyone didn’t like the goings on to STFU/sit on their hands.

Initial impressions were, and the immediate spin from Team Trump, MAGA goobers in elected office and even many journalists were “Wow!  Trump has firm control of MAGA and the GOP because he had “unanimous” support from that audience.”  It was all, with CNN being complicit an attempt to eliminate any more talk of an alternative to Trump.  To tell every conservative from small towns that are dots on the map to uber rich GOP donors “Resistance is futile so get on board or get crushed.”

Initial impressions matter.  Cleaning them up is difficult.  And with tens of millions of MAGA voters out there, people who literally would vote for him if he went out and shot someone in the street (as long as it was a liberal of course) the impression of Trump getting unqualified “love” from that audience is set in stone.  Even Trump himself couldn’t change it now if he wanted to.  Oh, and here’s a question.  Your own and other journalists knew, as the Town Hall was going on there was a substantial number of people who weren’t happy with the goings on.  People who said literally right afterwards that they’d hoped Trump had changed, softened some and would have by now developed actual policies that would be good for them/the country and what they were.  Or that he’d stop griping about 2020.  And other stuff.  But they obeyed the rules and just sat there uncomfortably.  Not that anyone would know it from the early reporting.  And even now it’s STILL not something that gets the attention it should have gotten starting the moment that Town Hall concluded and “journalists” started weighing in on CNN and elsewhere!

THAT my friends is why I and so many others, including and especially people that are well known and respected are giving CNN unshirted hell.  I read an article this morning he/they are catching it from all sides now including from within their own news organization.

Silos?’

Well Mr. Cooper we’ve had entirely too many years to see the giant plexiglass silo of Trump.  It’s topped with a stupid replica of a wig of Trump’s ridiculous combover hairdo, the word LIES in block letters down the sides and stuffed to the max with signs, each of which contains one of the tens of thousands of lies he’s told since he officially became a Presidential candidate.

We all, and I mean everyone knows Trump lies (often outrageously) like he breathes!  We know how sleazy he is.  We know his ego is out of control.  We know he thinks ONLY of himself and will throw anyone under the bus.  We know all that and more.

We’ve known it for YEARS!

Everyone in that audience knew what Trump would say.  On any topic that came up.  Some hoped he’d pivot from talking about 2020 but those hopes got stomped on.  CNN and host Collins knew what Trump would say and that he’d blow past any attempt to fact check him.  Trump knew we all knew it!  And that is why CNN’s airing the whole sh!t show live was such a despicable, disgraceful act.

Cooper with his talk about silos can kiss my a$$.  He knew damn well when he did his little “we have a responsibility to the public to present the news and the public has a responsibility to pay attention” b.s. that it was exactly that.  BULL SH!T.   The attempt to turn things around and make CNN’s mistake our fault really, really pi$$es me off!

As I wrote yesterday CNN could have had their little event and aired clips from it – with fact checking.  And seriously now, other than goading the audience to join him in mocking and continuing to defame E. Jean Carroll the day after the verdict what was new?  Well, he DID say the jury acquitted him of rape during that segment.  That by the way is going to be his “defense” moving forward.  And trust me, MAGAs everywhere including some in and on the floor of Congress will say that same thing – that “the jury said he didn’t rape Carroll.”  As sick as my stomach felt when I saw Trump saying that I know it’s going to get worse.   I half expected that when the prior day’s verdicts came up Trump would seize on that and say what he did, and CNN let him make his disgusting talking point live and in front of an audience that would voice support on the spot!

Silos?  I’m not in some silo.  It’s MAGAs and far too many journalists and now it seems not just Fox but a second network that are in silos.  With a slew of folks who call themselves professional journalists who are oh so proud to note they are part of “legitimate” outlets clambering in!   Sometimes their silos are marked “both siderism.”  Sometimes the silo is marked “Repeat anything Trump says.”  Stuff like that.

And ALL of them are in a fenced area that is marked with a small sign that says “Trump generates viewers/readers and makes us money.  Get your a$$ in here!”

To CNN and all news outlets and journalists in general: We don’t need to see over an hour, live and telecast to a national audience who and what Trump is!  We already know.  We’ve known it for years!  What we need is for you to use the L word (LIE) every single time he tells one.  And,  DO  NOT  SHOW   HIM   LIVE.  A short segment on one of his events recounting his repeating the same LIES will do.

Actual NEWS would be if he told a new and outrageous lie, but before showing/quoting (for print outlets) it explain how/why what folks are going to see/read is a LIE.   REAL news would be Trump telling the freaking truth.  Like he won’t criticize Putin because he’s afraid of what Putin or other oligarchs can do to him.  Or that he knew all along that plans were in place to attack the Capitol and to even kill some members of Congress and even Pence so he could declare Martial Law and maybe prevent Biden’s Inauguration.

But for now, Anderson Cooper and CNN need to STFU and slink away to wallow in the giant vat of shame, a vat filled with contents of the Mar A Lago septic tank.   Knock off the holier than thou, “you should be ashamed of yourself for not watching our Town Hall and seeing what Trump is” bullsh!t.  Try doing what journalists are supposed to do.  Call out lies with proof of the truth.  Investigate.  Find documents/records.  Explain them to the public.  Find people willing to speak the truth about what they saw, took part in.  Things Trump and his top people (or with anyone with power) don’t want the public to know.

But DON’T scold us for criticizing you when you fail to be good journalists.  For showing the country (and the world which I must note is more than a little troubled by your little Town Hall and that audience reaction you took pains to make sure happened) nothing new, but rather the same old lies only this time instead of some rambling word-salad in front of crazed MAGA goobers an audience that was sort of normal looking.  DON’T make a clear effort to help Trump clear the field of challengers.

Instead how about putting in the effort to explain just what so many policies of Trump have wrought that has hurt so many people including his supporters?   There are those in your ranks who do that but they are badly outnumbered by the lazy-a$$ed rest of you who just want to “roll the videotape” and talk about “horse race” stuff.