Donald Trump stunned the world on Tuesday night, riding a silent majority to winning the vote to become the next President of the United States. I can recall thinking when the media went at him with all guns blazing following the audio recording of his remarks about women, that it’s very possible that Trump has a ton of support; but there is no way anybody in their right mind would ever admit to it. I also thought it was possible that the media had been successful in their attempt to sabotage the democratic process. I have to admit that when Tuesday rolled around, I had visions of it being a Hillary Clinton landslide. Instead, what happened was that the public, basically, delivered a message that they had heard the media loud and clear and determined that what the media was telling them was false. In fact, this vote was more about what the public was rejecting more than it was about what they accepted.
The media, still smug and in denial of their role as of Sunday night, deserves the goat horns here. They took on Hillary Clinton as their project to install her into power and they lost. Had the media done their job and just reported facts, without immersing their personal opinions, we may have had a different outcome.
First of all, let’s look at the claim that Trump is a bad businessman because he’s gone bankrupt four times. This is untrue and misleading. Trump has not ever gone bankrupt, that I’m aware of. He’s had four of his companies go bankrupt and that’s a lot different than a personal bankruptcy. Furthermore, he owns over 500 companies. To have four of them go bankrupt is, essentially, a non-story. I don’t know about you, but I don’t bat 99% in anything I do at life, so for Trump to have 4/500 go bankrupt; I’m going to give him a pass.
The claim that Trump is a tax evader is also false. Trump used laws put in place by politicians to avoid paying taxes. Yes, Trump’s companies make a ton of money and, therefore, you’d think those firms would be contributing, greatly, to the tax base. But, Trump has said (without any traction being picked up by the media) that because he’s aware of all the various loopholes that prevent massive companies from paying taxes; he is in a great position to understand what it takes to close those loopholes.
The media loved hanging their hat, on Tuesday night, to the fact that uneducated white males were motivated to vote and they support Trump. This was reported as a negative story and that we should look at an uneducated white male’s vote as one that should be worth less than someone else’s vote. Imagine the media calling a black female uneducated. Think how inappropriate that sounds. Most right wing white males don’t care, so we aren’t going to raise a stink about the phrase ‘uneducated white male’, but it’s extremely misleading. That doesn’t mean high school dropout. It means trade worker.
The idea that Trump is racist and opposes LGBTQ rights is also a fairy tale. It got no play, but Trump waved a gay pride flag at one of his rallies and boasted that he’d ensure America would be a safe place for all people and he made a point to say that he was opposed to bringing in immigrants who have ideals contrary to LGBTQ rights. Which brings me to this notion Trump hates Mexicans and Muslims. Trump has pledged to clamp down on illegal Mexicans entering the States.
He’s been very open about supporting legal Mexican immigration. And, while he has called for a moratorium on Muslims entering the US from countries in conflict, it’s only because he feels the vetting process is flawed and he wants to put a better one in place.
CNN’s reporting of the email scandal that the FBI investigated Clinton for, on two separate occasions, was laughable. As I sat in a hotel room one night, I watched a reporter lecture the public to not look at the emails because it’s illegal and they could be charged; therefore any information you want to learn from these emails has to be received from CNN because media has special permission to look at them. I mean, really. I had CNN disconnected from my personal cable service years ago (when they decided to show dogs being poisoned in Afghanistan, just for the shock value) as I determined they were not a 24-hour news reporting channel. They actually are a 24-hour news generating channel and that’s a big difference.
If you think media isn’t in bed with huge corporations, you are gullible. Even on the local level, I can tell you from my own personal experience that if a major sponsor found itself in the news, we were to tread lightly on what ended up in a newscast. So, it’s not crazy to think that on an international scale, that there aren’t suit and tie guys in positions of power with the media who influence the on-air product. An impartial journalist is a dinosaur.
Nice person mentions return next week.
