Pundits in the mainstream American media are driving themselves crazy.
Their coverage of President Trump has been at a fever pitch for the past two and a half years, but somehow it feels as though the pitch is constantly rising. Each time we turn on the news, we hear that Trump has said or done something that spells the imminent collapse of his presidency, the country as we know it, or even the world. But in case it doesn’t, they have at least five other stories in the pipeline of things they hope might.
And as each supposed crisis dissipates, pundits quietly shelve it and turn their attention to the emerging stories without ever acknowledging that they might have overreacted to the previous one.
Much like the auditory illusion of the Shepard Tone, where a looped piece of audio gives the impression of a never-ending glissando, the media loops the same outrage over and again giving the impression of a constantly increasing state of crisis. If Chris Cuomo, Rachel Maddow, and Joe Scarborough believe a third of the invectives and warnings they spout daily, it’s hard to see how they haven’t had a dozen nervous breakdowns yet.
Of course, none of the scandals and outrages that have dominated the news since the beginning of this presidency have really amounted to much.
Remember when President Trump’s revocation of John Brennan’s security clearance was clear evidence that Trump colluded with Russia? Or when his nomination of a man to the Supreme Court, that prompted allegations that his nominee had sexually assaulted a woman decades ago, revealed the “chilling power of sexual violence”? Or when Robert Mueller’s testimony before Congress was going to devastate the president and force impeachment proceedings?
More recently, we’ve heard that President Trump’s perfectly innocuous call with the Ukrainian president is grounds for impeachment. Why? Because he asked the Ukrainian president to look into potential foreign meddling into American politics and potential corruption by a former U.S. vice president.
When elected Democrats spend tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars and years of our time attacking a sitting president and still fail to come up with a single piece of evidence to conclusively support any of their claims, they’re simply being diligent. But if a president inquiries into potential corruption by a sitting vice-president, that is an unconscionable offense and must be punished immediately.
The double standard is not new.
Remember when they railed against then-candidate Trump for refusing to pledge to accept the election results? That was when they thought Clinton would win. They spent the next two-and-a-half years refusing to accept the election results. They even dragged out poor old President Jimmy Carter to call President Trump illegitimate.
Remember how they reveled in the disproportionate force that the FBI used to harass former Trump associates and how they claimed that lying to the FBI about something that wasn’t a crime was an unforgivable sin, all while forgiving Andrew McCabe for a far more malicious deception? When Trump vows justice, they call it harassment. When they vow harassment, they call it justice.
Remember how most elected Democrats refused to criticize Rep. Maxine Waters (D.- CA) for her calls to harass Trump supporters? After all, as Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D.-N.Y.) said, Waters was “entitled to her opinion.” But even as President Trump condemns violence, they blame him for any incident that they can tangentially tie to any of his statements.
The double standard is not new at all. I’ve been writing about it for more than a year. I’ve been talking it about it for even longer.
But all of this is so tiresome and so predictable.
It’s so predictable that I took a page from the media’s book and directly cribbed the first part of this article from a piece I wrote more than a year ago. Just update the time references, slot in whatever stories the media are going crazy over today, and voilà.
But even though it may seem as though we’re stuck in an insanity-provoking loop, we are going somewhere. Elected Democrats are exposing themselves as boring, unimaginative, and repetitive. And some elected Republicans have wised up to the scam their colleagues and the mainstream media play and are beginning to grow spines.
And we are all getting tired of the stupid bullshit that passes for a congressional hearing nowadays.
And as congressional Democrats dig themselves deeper into the hole with impeachment proceedings, the Trump Administration continues addressing the country’s problems. Problems that we have ignored for decades.
The administration continues reforming the country’s trade deals around the world and negotiating new arrangements to ensure that American workers and producers are treated fairly and protected from malicious trade practices. It continues ramping up enforcement of existing immigration law and advocating for immigration policy that benefits American citizens. It continues pushing policies to encourage business investment and increased domestic economic growth. It even has started looking ahead to address homelessness and new potential military threats from space.
As much fun as it has been to watch media pundits breathlessly report that this time, the president will get impeached for sure, every single day for the past two and a half years, there are far more interesting topics we should be examining.
Elected Democrats have gotten so wrapped up in their hatred of President Trump, in their acceptance of woke identity politics, and in their constant grandstanding and self-validation that they have forgotten that most Americans like the United States of America and would prefer their elected leaders to do their jobs and focus on their future.