By Nancy Thorner & Bonnie O'Neil -
The effectiveness and ultimate impact leaders have on a society are difficult to discern during the time of their service. For instance, serious mistakes were made during President Obama’s administration. The more obvious examples were the tragedy in Benghazi that resulted in the death of our Ambassador and several brave Americans who tried to rescue him; an American border agent murdered during the "Fast & Furious” program; the I.R.S. scandal that identified inconsistencies in the agency's timely responses to Republican applications verses those of Democrats; the AP wiretaps; the Secret Service scandal; and a dozen or more less serious Obama-related infractions that received little publicity. Surprisingly, however, the mainstream media rarely attributed the blame for any of the above mistakes on President Obama.
Rightly perceived by many Republicans is that Obama administration problems were largely minimized, and even swept under the rug by mainstream media sources of the same political persuasion, who wanted the young, charismatic first Black president to succeed. That the same media chose the opposite approach to our current President should not come as a surprise.
While there have been mistakes and errors of judgment made by President Trump and/or members of his administration, the media has approached this President and his administration with a scrutiny that rivals that of Sherlock Holmes tracking down Professor Moriarty. That same gusto to search and report problems was largely absent in the Obama administration, which points to a double standard the likes of which have rarely been seen at any time in the past century.
Trump and the unhinged mainstream media
This lack of respect for Trump began when he was one of seventeen Republicans running for the presidency. When the presidential race was whittled down to a contest between Trump and Hillary, the media was undoubtedly far more favorable to Hillary than to Trump, both in candidate analysis and in the reporting of their debates.
History has shown there was never a time when a nation of our size and significant diversity of people was ever in agreement on any given issue. There will always be problems needing to be solved or resolved. However, even two years after leaving office, many Obama supporters, including some in the media, still argue that President Obama was near flawless.
Rarely mentioned or reported is the way Barack Obama has deviated from established courtesies other Presidents gave to those who succeeded them. Most former presidents left Washington D.C. and went back to their home state, but not Obama. He bought an expensive home close to the White House and began working with billionaire George Soros and other Leftist organizations (The Deep State) to tear down and discredit Trump's presidency by any means possible.
As no president is perfect, only with the passage of time can the successes and failures of a president be clearly and fairly evaluated. Historians are the first to give advice and warnings about prematurely judging a president while still in office or even within a few years following his term, as it's entirely possible what once seemed a mistake at the time, later proved to be a brilliant decision. The opposite has proved true as well.
In the political atmosphere of today, time as a factor for judging presidents has gone by the wayside. The same media who favored former President Obama have applied the opposite judgement tactics in dealing with President Trump, his cabinet and staff. Having often rushed to publish apparent missteps of President Trump, using intensive scrutiny to gleefully report about a perceived abuse, they later discover their reporting was inaccurate and had been placed in the indisputable category of fake news.
Effects of Media Bias
As Tim Graham said, a director at the conservative Media Research Center, “There’s a dramatic difference in the degree of hostility the press has shown Presidents Trump and Obama. I guess it’s easier to make errors writing stories where Trump is twirling his villain’s mustache than when you’re writing about how tone Michelle Obama ’s arms are.”
According to Fox News, Jill Abramson, the veteran journalist who led the newspaper from 2011 to 2014, revealed through her "tell-all" book the Anti-Trump bias from deep within the Times.
Citizens largely distrust media due to bias resulting from drastic differences in the leniency regarding errors made by Obama and his administration, in contrast to the intense scrutiny by media sources to find and report negative information about President Trump and those loyal to him, whether manufactured or not.
When the media is biased for or against a president, it becomes a problem for everyone, as negative and/or selective and/or selective journalism ultimately adversely impacts American citizens and our nation in unintended ways. Democrats, especially those in high positions of power, have provided media sources with much negative fodder to malign our President with and those around him. While the deceptive rhetoric helped Democrats win back seats in the 2018 mid-term elections, such inflammatory and misleading rhetoric is certain to have serious unintended consequences for our nation, and ultimately its people, no matter their political affiliation.
The constant attacks and negativity spewed against President Trump do contribute to influencing the world opinion of America. Foreign enemies use this negative fodder to provide credibility for their false claims against this nation. The last thing this nation needs is for our own leaders and media to be a catalyst for causing this nation and its people harm. It is unproductive when our own mainstream media searches and publishes unverifiable information which can foster misunderstandings with countries we want and need as friends.
Partisan, left-leaning and hate Trump Americans enthusiastically endorse what they deem is the media’s job and its duty to report negative information for the purpose of destroying Trump, caring not if America’s reputation is harmed. Not so, however, when the same mainstream media protected and shielded from scrutiny President Obama and his administration from more dire circumstances and potentially criminal prosecution.
Mueller as partisan fixer and government abuse protector
One needs to look no further than the present Mueller investigation to realize that information given to a FISA court, paid for by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign, was the impetus to put in motion the appointment of a Special Counsel headed by Robert Mueller. Mueller, as a fixer, was brought in to assure that Democrats in the Obama administration escaped any scrutiny for possible criminal acts and transgressions, but to instead launch a fishing expedition to search for evidence of Russian collusion with a witch hunt that has since become more far reaching, for the express purpose to remove Trump from office.
Why is it that media of all stripes, and Congressional members on both sides of the aisle, were unwilling to do the research necessary to discover the truth about Robert Mueller so the public could be informed? Instead, Democrats and Republicans alike painted a boy scout image of Mueller as to his appointment to head the Special counsel.
As related in the book, Robert Mueller, Errand Boy for the Deep State by John Milkovich, Robert Mueller has a long history of leading government investigations by placing FBI agents in charge of investigations that were diversions or cover-ups of what really happened. People were even accused falsely of a crime, because of Mueller, to protect government wrongdoings, such as what happened at Ruby Ridge with the Weavers in the 1990's and the 2002 false accusation of Dr. Bruce Ivins in the mailing of anthrax. Others detailed account of Mueller's involvement over many years, through his leadership positions with the FBI, include Pan Am 103, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Surveillance State after 9-11, etc.
Of note, and as reported on 2/6/2019:
Robert Mueller, as former FBI director, once was hauled before the nation’s secret intelligence court to address a large number of instances in which the FBI cheated on sensitive surveillance warrants, according to evidence gathered by congressional investigators.
For most of the past 16 years, Mueller’s closed-door encounter escaped public notice because of the secrecy of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).”
As reported early on in our article, many mistakes were made during Obama's presidency, some were of criminal nature and called for jail time. But will justice ever be served on those guilty of crimes in the Obama administration? With the advent of Mueller, the fixer, and with the election of President Trump, Mueller has provided mainstream media the license to dismiss Obama-related crimes as of no consequence, while it aggressively pursues Trump as the real villain who must be discredited in the eyes of the public to make possible Trump's removal from office.
media prevails
A nation in jeopardy
"All politics is personal” is a phrase often heard, but ironically not even those who have been credited with originating that phrase want to claim authorship of it. Why is this so? Because the phrase represents the bare faced ugly truth, most politicians, Democrat and Republican, would rather we believe all they say and do is for altruistic purposes, rather than to promote themselves and/or their party’s agenda. Establishment Republicans continue to thwart Trump's call to fund the building of a border wall on our southern border, bowing down instead to the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the Koch brother who want cheap labor for their generous campaign donations.
Citizens deserve the absolute truth and must be provided facts rather than carefully crafted self-serving statements if our nation is to remain a leading power in today's world. America's survival is in jeopardy if we cannot trust our media to thoroughly investigate facts and provide them without any bias to the public, not only so each of us can decide what we believe is best for ourselves, but also for this nation and its citizens to prosper. But is this just an altruistic dream?
Few politicians of today seem to put country ahead of their personal ambitions, but might there be public eagerness for good news, unity, and words of encouragement? Trump's recent State of the Union address reflected such unity, through words honoring our Founding Fathers and how today's greatness was achieved through much sacrifice by the American people since its founding in 1787.
The Democrat Party of today leans so far to the Left that many Americans have a right to be concerned what changes they might make if they should win back the Senate and/or the presidency in 2020. Democrats seem to have lost sight of, or refuse to admit that what they are proposing closely resembles the very type of government Americans have avoided since our inception: arbitrary rule by a King or a government.
Our Founding Fathers set forth a Representative Republic for this nation to live by, defined by a Constitution that established America's national government and fundamental laws and guaranteed certain basic rights for its citizens. It was signed on September 17, 1787, by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
It seems unlikely that the mainstreams media will change its partisan stripes. It will be up to the American people to obtain the facts necessary to stop the demise of this nation, lest uninformed and partisan Democrat voters manage to defeat Trump and perhaps even capture the Senate in 2020 to enact their long-held Utopia dream of Socialism.
