The media’s never-ending negative campaign against Donald Trump has always relied heavily on the exploitation of anonymous sources. Journalists position themselves as the idealists defending “democratic norms,” but there’s nothing “democratic” about anonymous mudslinging. That may be a Democrat norm, but it’s not democratic.
It’s also ridiculous for the media to pretend the Trump indictments aren’t shredding a democratic norm, or that they are somehow nonpartisan or non-political. Trump’s Justice Department didn’t indict Hunter Biden in the last campaign. The Democrats – in Washington, in New York City, and soon in Georgia – are doing that to Trump.
In its first story on special counsel Jack Smith seeking a protective order against Trump on August 5 after Trump made revenge threats against unnamed enemies, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer complained Trump “has also promised that if elected, he would appoint a ‘real’ special prosecutor to investigate Mr. Biden and his family, proposing to eliminate the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.”
So if Trump does what Biden did, his attempt at revenge violates the norm, not the original weaponization.
Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump is so transparently and arrogantly political that he filed another motion surrounding the protective order, objecting to Trump lawyer John Lauro appearing on five Sunday news programs. Lauro argued Smith was seeking to suppress Trump’s freedom of speech after Trump made vague threats of revenge on his “Truth Social” site.
Smith’s motion complained “the defendant seeks to use the discovery material to litigate this case in the media. But that is contrary to the purpose of criminal discovery, which is to afford defendants the ability to prepare for and mount a defense in court—not to wage a media campaign.”
By that standard, Trump’s lawyers should never appear on television on a topic as ABC, CBS, and NBC are obsessing over for literally hundreds of minutes. Smith’s ideal is apparently media coverage that is all prosecution and no defense. The indictment is everything, and any response to it harms democracy and the judicial system.
But on Wednesday, The New York Times published an anonymously-sourced front-page story revealing a post-election strategy memo from Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro that “first came to light in last week’s indictment of Trump.” Did Team Smith leak it? No one will ever know. They will only mention “A copy obtained by the New York Times.” The story by Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage, and Luke Broadwater was all Trump prosecution, and no defense.
Previous defendants in Jack Smith cases – like former Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell – have complained the prosecutor leaked aggressively to the papers. But somehow you can’t accuse Smith of that here…because the pro-Biden media refuse to reveal their anonymous sources for anti-Trump hit jobs.
Back in the quaint days of 2009, PBS anchorman Jim Lehrer provided a list of his journalistic rules and they included “Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions,” and “No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.”
The New York Times (and almost everyone else in the leftist press) does not subscribe to these rules of fairness and civility, especially when it comes to the former president, now at risk of spending the rest of his life in prison.
Reporters act shocked that Trump has gained in the polls after multiple indictments. They are so devoid of introspection that they are incapable of imagining that Biden’s Justice Department seeking multiple indictments and trials during an election year defines undemocratic election interference. The media manipulate voters by obsessing over Trump scandals and drive out all the policy issues voters would like discussed.