How the national media reacted to the indictments against Russians last week is a case study in how the media react to almost everything in Trump politics.
It’s full hysteria, followed by people who actually know things explaining that what just happened isn’t what the press told you. And when the press come to accept reality, depression sets in.
After news broke of the indictments last Friday, HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher that night said, “I just want to ask the Trump voters, what is left for you? He’s plainly a traitor who doesn’t defend his own country. This is not a hoax. This really happened … and [the Russians] were trying to get Trump elected.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said the indictments showed that “President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both.”
He also suggested Trump must be “hiding something” and that because he hasn’t reacted with full hostility to Russia’s election meddling his “behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution.”
Protect and defend from what?
The indictments relate to more than a dozen Russians and three companies that stand accused of attempting to disrupt the election. The charges say that the Russians deliberately agitated voters by using social media to spread content on controversial issues, like the Black Lives Matter movement. Prosecutors also said the accused stole the identities of American citizens and posed as political activists in carrying out the plot.The charges very explicitly do not implicate the Trump campaign, even though it said that some of the Russians, while posing as Americans, helped organize pro-Trump rallies.
Yet the indictments also noted that the Russians organized at least one anti-Trump rally as well.
The conspiracy, according to the charges, began four years ago in 2014. Trump launched his campaign for the Republican nomination in the summer of 2015.
This “conspiracy” could be carried out by anyone with too much time in their trailer. In fact, it sounds a lot like what Americans with too much time have been doing in their trailers.
Russians set up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to spread dumb memes telling blacks not to vote, promoting Trump and calling Hillary Clinton “Satan.”
OK. And Bloomberg Businessweek’s Joshua Green, an American, wrote a whole book about Trump and former White House strategist Steve Bannon called “Devil’s Bargain.”
If an entire government like Russia’s wants to tip America’s democracy, posting notes on Facebook isn’t the most novel approach.
The indictments say the Russians wanted to divide Americans. Americans are already divided, so they should have saved their time and money.
Scheming to create division in America is like creating a plot to turn it up a few degrees in hell. What’s the point? It’s hell, dummy.
You would hope other countries stay out of our elections, but if this is the extent of it, how is Trump expected to react?
He didn’t tweet about Vladimir Putin, so Friedman likened it to former President George W. Bush if he had ignored Sept. 11.
With stunning originality, Washington Post writer Max Boot made the same comparison.
“That’s roughly where we stand after the second-worst foreign attack on America in the past two decades,” Boot wrote. “The Russian subversion of the 2016 election did not, to be sure, kill nearly 3,000 people. But its longer-term impact may be even more corrosive by undermining faith in our democracy. … The most benign explanation is that [Trump] is putting his vanity — he can’t have anything taint his glorious victory — above his obligation to ‘protect and defend the Constitution.’ The more sinister hypothesis is that he has something to hide and, having benefited from Russia’s assistance once, hopes for more aid in 2018 and 2020.”
After a few days, the delirium tapered and journalists found a new reason to be angry at Trump and the indictments that had nothing to do with his campaign colluding with Russia.
“One thing that is clear to me following the special counsel’s indictment of 13 Russians and three companies for interfering with our election is that the black vote was specifically under attack, from sources foreign and domestic,” wrote liberal New York Times columnist Charles Blow, referring to the Russian Facebook posts and tweets that told blacks to simply not vote. (Though Blow admits that rapper Killer Mike and former NFL player Colin Kaepernick told blacks to do the same thing.)
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank said the Russian conspiracy turned Americans who supported Trump into “useful idiots.”
Because the election didn’t go the way they wanted, it must have been a trick!
There was no trick. And if there were, the indictments expressly show that it wasn’t Trump’s. That’s true even if the media won’t accept it.
