The worst thing to be seen yesterday was the video clip of President Donald Trump entertaining a hooting crowd at one of his rallies by mocking Christine Blasey Ford and her testimony about her sexual assault. The worst reaction to that worst thing came from the former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, denying on Twitter that everyone had seen what they had seen:
He didn’t mock Professor Ford. He pointed out many of the inconsistencies in her account – something the MSM won’t do, because they’re too invested in attacking Brett Kavanaugh. If the press were balanced, they would have raised the same issues Pres. Trump raised here.
It was a queasy reminder—along with the ricin-laced letters reportedly in the mail—of what an atrocity and disaster the eight years of the George W. Bush administration were, and how blithely people in politics and the media have tried to bury the wreckage and pretend it all never happened, and how the shouting, tinsel-decked brutality of Trump is not a wild deflection of the course of American history but the same vector the same paid professionals have been pushing toward all along. Count the lies, by the mouthpiece of the last Republican White House:
He didn’t mock Professor Ford.
He did, he was doing shtick, he had call-backs.
He pointed out many of the inconsistencies…
No, he harped on the consistent details she freely and carefully explained that she did not remember.
…in her account.
“Upstairs! Downstairs! Where was it? ‘I don’t know,'” Trump said. Ford’s account was clear that the assault happened upstairs.
something the MSM won’t do, because they’re too invested in attacking Brett Kavanaugh
The press has thoroughly reported what Ford says she does and doesn’t remember; reporters have been more interested in Kavanaugh’s side of story because Kavanaugh’s side of story is made up of evasions and lies that can be disproven through reporting.
If the press were balanced, they would have raised the same issues Pres. Trump raised here.
If the press were balanced: Half a slogan from the pro-Trump network that was the pro-Bush network, whose former executive vice president for programming now runs communications for the Trump White House—a network for which Ari Fleischer is a regular contributor. Yet Fleischer, embedded in an immense, integrated politics-and-entertainment messaging machine, believes some systemic bias is keeping the public from getting the correct message. Maybe try blaming the messenger.
