Coverage of Kavanaugh, Biden big double standard
Americans are so confused and afraid that many have been willing to accept suspension of the Bill of Rights.
If that isn’t chaos, and the foundation of chaos to come, what is?
Two stories out of Washington, narratives shaped by the Washington Beltway media establishment, illustrate the break. They sit there as the coronavirus consumes the news cycle.
One is the double standard in the treatment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden over claims of sexual assault.
Publicly admitting you were wrong about something is painful. I should know. Many of us admitted we were wrong about Iraq and the supposed weapons of mass destruction. And many apologized.
The other story involves that amazing lack of national journalistic curiosity over the FBI’s crumbling perjury case against former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn.
What Washington pundit or TV talking head really wants to publicly examine how they were manipulated by intelligence sources in a move to take down a president?
Just so there’s no mistake here, I am separating journalism into two distinct camps. One is made up of local reporters and photographers, and the other is the Washington Beltway crowd of national reporters and pundits.
Local news reporters tell you what is going on in your cities, at your hospitals and on the ground. Local reporters have become ill from the virus. They face layoffs and salary cutbacks in these uncertain times.
The Washington Beltway crowd, however, which works in large part as handmaidens to the national Democratic Party, is in a different universe.
The double standard between Kavanaugh and Biden is painfully obvious. Both men were hit with claims of sexual assault.
But the Washington media and the Democratic Party pounced on Kavanaugh immediately, and joined in self-righteous fury to destroy him, running wild claims that he was leader of a cult of gang rapists, elevating weasels like the now-discredited Michael Avenatti — a convicted extortionist — to preen and pass judgment on Kavanaugh before cable news audiences.
And Biden? After the story dribbled out about former aide Tara Reade, Biden was not asked about her in several national interviews. It took 19 days for it to be addressed by The New York Times.
Now Kavanaugh’s most ravenous critics in media, politics and the #MeToo movement find themselves talking about “due process,” if they talk about the Biden accusation at all. Just Google the name of a pundit, add Kavanaugh and “sexual assault” and see for yourself.
The Flynn story is even more disturbing. Reporters tell themselves they’re curious, but this story has been met with an appalling lack of curiosity.
The FBI’s perjury case against Flynn is collapsing. It appears the feds used a perjury trap on Flynn to get him out of the way so he couldn’t stop the takedown of a president with that now-discredited Russia collusion probe.
“What is our goal?” one FBI official notes in the margins of recently released documents. “Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
Whether you loathe President Donald Trump or support him, and whether you support his policies on the courts, taxes and immigration while remaining justifiably queasy about the temperament of this most volatile man, what happened to Flynn should frighten every American.