What’s it going to take to stop the both-sidesing?
Trump shooting someone on Fifth Avenue?
I think what Trump just did is even more illegal than that. After all, there’s no possibility of self-defense, or an insanity plea.
Using tax dollars to put a campaign commercial on TV is not just flatly, undeniably, entirely and unreservedly against the law, it’s also profoundly un-American. Government propaganda is the tool of authoritarian regimes that know they can act with impunity.
It is so freaking outrageous that the first reaction of every thinking American – even White House political reporters – should be that it has to be stopped, and there must be punishment. That’s what the news should reflect.
But no. Because in our top newsrooms, there is no “taking sides” on a partisan dispute.
Hey, maybe he didn’t know the gun was loaded.
So yeah. Trump shoots someone on Fifth Avenue. Here’s how they’d cover it:
- The New York Times, under the headline: “A Shooting on Fifth Avenue, This One By the President,” reports four paragraphs down: “Some ethics experts have argued that the shooting could violate laws against assault with a deadly weapon.”
- The Washington Post reports: “Democratic members of Congress and former prosecutors say it was done by a person using a gun against someone else, and therefore a potential violation of state law.”
- The Wall Street Journal, calling the shooting “unusual” in a subhead, reports: “On Saturday night, a local CBS News reporter in New York City noticed something unusual on Fifth Avenue: Donald Trump shooting someone.” Then, a few paragraphs down: “the shooting could violate state law, ethics experts said.”
- The Associated Press: “Multiple lawmakers of both parties on Thursday criticized the shooting, some noting that laws limit the circumstance for people shooting each other.”
- Politico: “Lawmakers of both parties have criticized the shooting, but the White House maintains past top White House officials have acted likewise, although he was on a hunting trip and said it was an accident.”
- On the CBS Evening News, Tony Doukoupil talks to White House correspondent Weija Jiang on the grounds of the White House:
Doukoupil: “Speaking of the president, there is a new shooting on Fifth Avenue that apparently involves him. What do we know?”
Jiang: “That’s right, so this shooting involves the president shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, and it’s mostly, you know, just Trump walking down the street, but it’s the projectile coming out of a gun and hitting someone else that is drawing fire because some Democrats say the shooting violates state law – laws that prohibit shooting people. But the White House says it’s quote clearly not that, and the president will do it again.”
News coverage in a free country over the last several days would have gone something like this:
The White House used taxpayer funds to broadcast a campaign commercial — a brazen and entirely unprecedented violation of foundational federal laws that prohibit government propaganda, limit partisan political activities of federal employees, and criminalize the theft of government funds.
More than that, government-paid propaganda – when broadcast within our borders – has long been considered anathema to the American public. It’s a shameless act strongly associated with enemies of the United States including the Nazis and the former Soviet Union. It is the sign of a government that controls, rather than serves, its people.
Public Citizen, “the citizens lobby,” filed a complaint on Friday with the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Special Counsel, which enforce public spending law and ethics rules. “For anyone with a modicum of ethics, common sense or respect for the law, it’s the most basic thing: Taxpayer funds cannot pay for partisan political propaganda,” said Lisa Gilbert, the group’s co-president. “These ads should immediately be pulled from the air, and the White House’s many apparent violations of the law should be investigated.”
The move was also widely seen as both an act of political desperation by a president watching his grip on Congress loosen, and an act of unparalleled personal narcissism.
I am sickened by the normalizing. And as I wrote last week, it jeopardizes our future as a democracy.