August 12, 2019

The Beltway press is focused on Joe Biden's gaffes more than Trump's daily toxic lying and erratic behavior, of course.

This is exactly the kind of media malfeasance we saw as a run-up to the Iraq war. I'm not a supporter of Joe Biden, but as many pundits (even on Fox News) have said his whole career has been filled with flubs and mistakes. Why is it so much worse now?

Fox News' Chris Stirewalt got right to the heart of the matter on America's Newsroom.

After Sandra Smith played Biden's recent gaffe about the Parkland shooting, she asked Chris his opinion.

Chris said, "Joe Biden? Never...a gaffe machine."

Then he got serious.

"You know I see a lot of parallels between Joe Biden 2020 and Donald Trump 2016," he said as far as the party leaders had reacted to the viability of their candidacies.

Stirewalt continued, "The press hates him. I have never seen an intensity in the political press -- not since Jeb Bush. Not since they were lancing Jeb Bush have I seen the political press unified in their loathing for a candidate in the way."

Sandra Smith off-camera said, "Wow."

"They hate Joe Biden like God hates sin," Stirewalt said.

I'm a progressive and part of Blue America PAC which has helped elect and support many progressives into Congress. I want a progressive candidate to represent the Democratic Party. But I will not stop calling out the media's malfeasance and Fox News lies pertaining to Democratic presidential nominees.

Watching the negative reactions to Biden's gaffes by the press, you'd think Biden shot a gun into a crowd and killed someone. You know, the way Trump bragged he could do and his supporters would still love him.

Brian Beutler has a great article on this: MEMBERS OF THE PRESS, WTF INDEED!

What did Beto O’Rourke mean this week when he asked reporters covering the white terrorist massacre in El Paso, TX, “members of the press, what the fuck?”

With those seven words, or maybe just the last three, O’Rourke captured widespread frustration with a political media that often refuses to see President Trump for what he is, and the political media spent the next 24 hours deepening that frustration.

Trump had just incited a racist mass murder in Texas, but after he read haltingly from a teleprompter, we were told, “He really did set a different tone than he did in the past when it comes to condemning this hate.” The New York Times processed the day’s developments with an astonishing but provisional A1 headline that blared “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS RACISM” before backtracking to a less insulting, but still upside-down version, “ASSAILING HATE, NOT GUNS.”

Read the whole piece.

Seth Abramson's suggestion for a ratio of coverage between Biden's gaffes and Trump's lies seems fair:

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