I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up below.
A quick housekeeping note: I’ve returned from two weeks on the West Coast, and I’m tanned, rested, and ready to fill all of your journalism needs! Today’s post is a freebie, so if you like it, you know what to do …
Weekly Zoom chats are returning this Friday, and I’ll have more information on this week’s guest in the next couple of days. I’m also leaving the comment section open on this post because I have a feeling it is going to generate some … feelings.
No President Is Perfect
Last Thursday, President Biden gave a speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall focused on the threats to democracy from Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters. There is, said Biden, a battle for “the soul of this nation.”
The speech was well-executed and vitally important, especially as Trump ramps up his rhetorical assaults on the rule of law and basic democratic norms — and as his acolytes, many who have embraced his Big Lie about the 2020 election, seek elected office around the country. (According to a troubling report today by Fivethirtyeight.com, only 71 out of 528 Republicans seeking office this Fall have fully accepted the results of the 2020 election).
However, Biden’s speech, and the event itself, were not without their imperfections. First, coming days before the traditional kick-off of the Fall campaign, the speech had serious political overtones. After all, a president can’t criticize his key political opponents, including a possible 2024 presidential rival in Trump, and then suggest that his remarks aren’t political (even his criticisms of them are correct).
Moreover, whether one agrees with Biden’s argument or not, there’s little doubt that the president was trying to define the upcoming midterm elections as a fight between the Democratic Party and the MAGA party of Donald Trump — and less a referendum on Joe Biden’s two years in office and, in particular, his handling of the economy.
All presidential speeches are, in some manner, political. Still, Biden didn’t help his cause by touching on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and the right to contraception that have little to do with the threats to democracy. Non-MAGA Republicans oppose abortion and same-sex marriage. Yet, Biden lumped them together, even as he went to great lengths elsewhere in the speech to differentiate MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans. That made this speech feel more like a campaign address — and an effort to define the midterm election in terms helpful to Democratic candidates — rather than an above-politics presidential address.
Second, the White House’s decision to pose two uniform-clad Marines behind the president as he spoke led to charges that Biden was needlessly politicizing the military.
These charges are correct.
The White House screwed up here. They used members of the armed forces at an event that had significant political overtones and, in doing so, implicitly suggested that Biden’s remarks had a military stamp of approval.
In an article in the Washington Post, Peter Feaver, a professor at Duke University, and Linda Cohn, a professor at the Naval War College, both of whom are experts on civil-military affairs, put all this in a proper context:
“Feaver … said that while presidents are political actors, they ‘need to be careful about not bringing the military into the frame when they are engaging in partisan, political acts.’”
“‘In this case, the choice to literally keep the Marines guards in the frame was an unfortunate one,’” said Feaver, who raised concerns about how Trump politicized the military on numerous occasions. ‘It may even have the effect of distracting from the message as people debate the optics rather than the substance of the president’s speech.’”
“Lindsay Cohn, who studies civil-military affairs at the Naval War College, said that Biden being framed by Marines during the speech was ‘not a crisis, but it could and should have been avoided.’”
“Cohn said she can see an argument that Biden was making a necessary and nonpartisan speech in which he noted explicitly that not all Republicans are a threat. But she added that the Biden administration needs to be ‘oversensitive and cautious about optics to try to strengthen some of the norms’ that the Trump administration weakened.”
So this is not a major scandal but something to be noted and avoided in the future. It certainly doesn’t take away from the vital message of Biden’s speech and the need for greater vigilance in confronting the threats to American democracy posed by Trump and his supporters.
End of issue, right?
Well, not so fast because the social media reaction from Biden’s supporters to the mild criticisms of Biden’s use of the Marines was bats***t insane.
Media commentators like CNN’s Brianna Keilar, who tweeted about the issue, were then inundated with attacks, one of which labeled her a propagandist and another called on CNN to fire her.
Others pointed out, correctly, that Trump did far worse, including using the military at political events and even having uniformed Marines appear in a video filmed at the White House for his reelection bid in 2020. That is most certainly true.
But, if one is arguing that it was wrong for Trump to politicize the military when he was president, that’s an implicit acknowledgment that Biden’s actions were also wrong. As my mother taught me long ago … two wrongs don’t make a right.
Biden-stans need to take the “L,” acknowledge the mistake and move on. But we live in a political environment where partisans cannot countenance even the slightest error by their side. To admit a mistake is to, in effect, give a win to one’s political rivals — and that is a bridge too far. The liberal outcry is not remotely akin to the GOP’s “fake news” accusation, but it comes from a similar place. When you don’t like the game, you attack the players.
These short-lived anti-media imbroglios almost always lead, as well, to the now persistent accusation that the mainstream press is hostile to the left or engages in bothsiderism (lumping Democrats and Republicans together in allegations of political malfeasance) or refuses to countenance the threats to democracy posed by Trump and his ilk.
This is, quite simply, bullshit.
The mainstream media, from the oft-criticized New York Times to the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, MSNBC, the major broadcast networks, etc, have reported at great length on January 6, Trump’s Big Lie, and the ongoing assault on democracy coming from MAGA Republicans. The New York Times has an entire section of their website devoted to January 6 with hundreds, if not thousands of stories, about the insurrection. So too does the Washington Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Capitol attack.
Anyone who argues the media is bothsidesing the threats to democracy or playing down the issue is either engaged in willful blindness or is simply lying. Does that mean that news organizations can still do better? Of course, no news organization is perfect. But one bad headline, article, or tweet is just that — and it’s outweighed by the important work done by the mainstream media in covering these issues.
Indeed, it’s incredibly ironic that Keilar was pelted by online abuse since not only has she been a persistent critic of former President Trump and the GOP, but many of her reports criticizing Republicans have gone viral.
Here, for example, is a tour de force bit of reporting she did the day after January 6 that took Republicans to task for “trying to rewrite history to cover their asses.” It’s gotten nearly 3 million views. It’s excellent. Watch it.
Here she is criticizing Republican state legislatures for systematically weakening democracy.
As if that’s not enough, here’s a nearly 11-minute video of Keilar lambasting Trump for his attacks on the military.
Keilar, whatever you might think of her as a journalist, is not some wishy-washy Trump enabler. One might imagine when she offers a mild, hardly off-base criticism of Biden, liberals would give her a pass. But in our polarized times, you’re either with us or against us, not some of the time, but all the time.
Here’s another example of liberals on social media freaking out over journalists doing their job:
I urge you to watch the clip in which Raddatz reports on how Biden’s speech has been received in MAGA circles. She’s not calling it “hate speech” or a “declaration of war.” Instead, Raddatz is reporting that this is what MAGA Republicans are saying about it … and then she gives a key White House advisor nearly ninety uninterrupted seconds to rebut. That’s a win for the White House.
While it’s true that Biden didn’t directly say every Trump voter is a threat to democracy (and as I noted above, he tried to differentiate between MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans), Biden certainly muddied the waters. I imagine most Republicans, even those who don’t like Trump but voted for him, would see Biden’s words as an attack on them. Whether that’s correct or not, Raddatz is on solid journalistic ground in asking the White House to explain the distinction that Biden is making.
What is not her job — and what her critics seem to be demanding — is that she accepts the president’s talking points and offers no scrutiny of his comments. Sorry, but that’s not how journalism works. There seems to be an expectation among many of Biden’s fiercest defenders — and Trump’s most virulent critics — that the news media will be on their side when it comes to reporting on threats to democracy. For the most part, they are! The mainstream media has not flinched at examining the GOP’s increasingly authoritarian bent and holding the party’s leaders’ feet to the fire in trumpeting Trump’s Big Lie. But they are not going to simply parrot White House talking points and refuse to push back when Democrats slip up. If you genuinely care about democracy, that’s precisely the kind of adversarial press corps you should want in America. You may not always like it, but if you prefer a news organization that slavishly favors one political party and excuses all their missteps … we already have one of those in this country.
Having Said That …
This is the sort of unvarnished truth-telling that we need more of in American political journalism:
John Harwood correctly notes that Biden’s speech was both political AND true. He goes on to describe Donald Trump as a “dishonest demagogue.” This also is a correct statement.
The problem, however, is that Harwood offered this commentary on what turned out to be his last day employed at CNN. Later on Friday afternoon, Harwood announced that he was leaving the network in what appears to be an ongoing purge at the network of reporters perceived as, somehow, anti-Trump or too liberal. Last month, another persistent Trump critic, media reporter Brian Stelter was also let go — as was legal affairs correspondent Jeffrey Toobin. According to a report in the Washington Post, this is not accidental:
CNN parted ways with veteran White House correspondent John Harwood on Friday in what network insiders viewed as the latest evidence of a shift to a less politically charged tone under new leader Chris Licht.
… Several current and former CNN employees who spoke with The Washington Post — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly — are interpreting the sudden exodus as evidence that Licht, who joined the network as chairman and CEO in May, is starting his tenure by casting out voices that had often been critical of former president Donald Trump and his allies, in an effort to present a new, more ideologically neutral CNN. That aligns with a vision repeatedly expressed by David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery.
… Licht has told CNN staff that he hopes to see more Republican politicians making guest appearances. He visited Capitol Hill in July and held meetings with key Democrats and Republicans.
… In a memo to staff in May, Licht said he wants CNN to help regain the trust that many people have lost in media, by “fearlessly speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo, questioning ‘group-think’ and educating viewers and readers with straightforward facts and insightful commentary, while always being respectful of differing viewpoints.”
A couple of things here. I have no idea what the term “ideologically neutral” means, but it’s not a journalistic concept. Reporters are supposed to be objective, report facts, and not try to do their job in some ideological netherworld. For example, is believing that democratic norms are important an ideological viewpoint? It’s not clear where the leaders at CNN come down on that question.
Moreover, “fearlessly speaking truth to power” and “educating viewers and readers with straightforward facts and insightful commentary” is exactly what Harwood is doing in the clip above. Casting out reporters like Harwood and Stelter is undercutting what Licht claims he wants to see at CNN, and all in pursuit of a faux sense of journalistic neutrality. The only currency that should matter in journalism is facts — and to be sure, facts are neither Democrat nor Republican. Rather, they are stubborn things that merit amplification from journalists.
When a major news organization pushes aside great journalists like Harwood and Stelter as part of some ratings-driven effort to win over viewers who don’t like being confronted by inconvenient truths that challenge their ideological priors, it’s the ultimate degradation of the Fourth Estate. It’s a situation where facts become secondary to feelings — and that’s not journalism. And it’s far more outrageous — and worthy of criticism — than pointing out when a Democratic president makes a mistake.
What’s Going On
Read Keilar on the civil-military issues raised by Biden’s speech.
The Republican politicization of COVID-19 led to thousands of deaths in red-state Montana.
The intervention of a federal judge into the FBI’s investigation of Donald Trump’s misuse of classified material is getting harshly criticized by dozens of legal experts.
Smart piece by Philip Bump on the GOP’s culture of victimization.
Great piece on why, when it comes to the war in Afghanistan, it’s generally a mistake to believe the generals
Musical Interlude
You can oppose abortion but you can’t oppose MY abortion. That in itself is the threat to democracy right there. So it was rightful of Biden to address it. This all part of the same fascist plan.
"Biden didn’t help his cause by touching on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and the right to contraception that have little to do with the threats to democracy. Non-MAGA Republicans oppose abortion and same-sex marriage."
I can't believe you wrote this. Stripping women of their human rights & bodily autonomy is a threat to democracy — one of the biggest right now this side of Trump.