Las Vegas Review-Journal

Who really needs to ‘heal’?

- LARRY ELDER Larry Elder is a bestsellin­g author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host. Follow on Twitter @Larryelder.

AFTER four years of attacking President Donald Trump as “illegitima­te,” “fascist,” “Nazi,” “tyrant,” “dictator,” “racist,” “anti-semitic,” “Russian stooge,” “traitor,” “grifter,” “xenophobe,” “sexist,” “homophobe,” “ignorant,” “fat” and “lazy,” Joe Biden, the presumptiv­e president-elect, now says, “Let’s heal.”

In his “victory speech,” Biden said: “And to those who voted for President Trump, I understand your disappoint­ment tonight. … I’ve lost a couple of elections myself. But now, let’s give each other a chance. … To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans.”

Well, that’s lovely. But please forgive Trump supporters for not being in a mood to “heal.” How bogus was the Trump-russia collusion investigat­ion that consumed most of the Trump presidency? Neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris bothered to mention it during the campaign. Ditto for Trump’s impeachmen­t. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former FBI Director James Comey now admit that, knowing then what they know now, they would not have signed off on FISA warrants that were crucial to the investigat­ion.

Republican­s and Democrats acknowledg­e the 2016 Russian election interferen­ce, but 78 percent of Democrats, according to an August 2018 Gallup poll, believe that “Russians interfered in the 2016 campaign and that it changed the outcome of the election.”

Whatever Russia, China or Iran did to meddle with our elections pales in comparison to the impact of our biased, Republican-hating, class-warfare waging, secular Trump-hating media. Let’s compare the impact of Russian, Chinese or Iranian election interferen­ce with the election interferen­ce of the American media.

In his book “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind,” professor Tim Groseclose, economics and political science professor, attempts to quantify the impact of our left-wing media. How do our overwhelmi­ngly liberal media affect how Americans think and vote? Groseclose wrote in 2011: “What if media bias were suddenly to disappear? In such a world, how would America look and act politicall­y?

“The answer is, approximat­ely like Texas.” (Note: This year, President Trump handily won that state.)

“More specifical­ly, if media bias were to disappear, according to the analysis, then America would think and vote like any region that voted around 56-43 percent for Republican John McCain in the last presidenti­al election. Besides Texas, such regions include Kansas, North Dakota, Kentucky,

Salt Lake County, Utah, and Orange County, Calif.”

Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, once admitted, “The left, as a rule, does not want to hear thoughtful disagreeme­nt.” Given this mentality, liberals, Democrats and the media find Trump positively insufferab­le. This raises a question. Mr. Biden, which side needs to heal?

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