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Watchdog or lapdog?

EDITOR

The talking heads on MSNBC and CNN have been using words and phrases from the Watergate era, such as “Nixonian”, “Enemies List” and “Saturday Night Massacre” to describe goings-on in and around the Trump campaign and presidency. Of course, the idea that matters to these people is that Trump couldn’t have won without the Russians. To be precise, what really matters is the hope that Trump can be impeached based on the idea of collusion with Russians. The idea is the best the Big Left Media and their Big Government allies can peddle because there’s no evidence, because it didn’t happen and they know it. Funny, because with Watergate, there was evidence of a crime. Remember the “third rate burglary” ?

I was nine, 10 years old at the time, but I still remember the news coverage. No cable or Internet, no 24/7 news cycle. You had to wait for the network evening news and every day, there it was, top of the broadcast, like clockwork, like a drumbeat, like today’s drumbeat over Russia. I remember being kind of fascinated by the idea that our own President could be guilty of these terrible crimes.

So what were President Nixon’s crimes? He authorized “wiretapping” Democrat campaign headquarters. It didn’t work. The burglars were caught. He tried to cover up his involvement. That didn’t work. He might have erased 18 minutes of Oval Office audio recordings. The media roasted him alive for that one even though nobody could prove it was him. Funny.

Anything funny about top FBI and DOJ officials arranging to surveil a presidential campaign staffer? Or using a “dossier” of political smear, paid for by the opposing campaign and originating with Russians, to secure authorization for the surveillance? Or top officials “stonewalling” congressional oversight investigations into these occurrences? Or a Secretary of State using a private, unsecured, unarchived and ultimately hacked e-mail system to conduct official, classified business, then deleting 33,000 of those e-mails after they had been subpoenaed by Congress? Or an FBI director exonerating the Secretary of State of these crimes in order to keep her Presidential campaign viable? Makes Nixon look more silly than sinister. So where’s the drumbeat?

If the media had done it’s job heads might’ve rolled over the above funny business. But today’s media goes out of it’s way to protect liberals and attack conservatives. Misleading headlines, conflated words and phrases, lies of omission, out of context quotes, even pictures have been weaponized. Is it any wonder Trump fights back?

If most of the media hadn’t become government lapdogs, they might be able to see past their ideology and realize they are their own worst enemy, not President Trump. Instead of banding together in editorialized victimhood they should get back to the job the Founders intended for them; to keep an unbiased eye on all of government.

Watchdog or lapdog? Trump can’t make that decision for them any more than he can abridge the freedom of the press.

Kenneth LaMarche

Escanaba

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