Every day I watch President Trump and the White House COVID-19 team do battle with the committed propagandists of the mainstream media. There is a certain amount of pleasure to be derived from watching the frustration of the reporters as they set one gotcha’ forensic trap after another for the president only to have him talk past, over and around them. Occasionally Trump will point out that a reporter has asked a “nasty” question or is a “loudmouth” or “wise guy”. While this has a certain limited entertainment value, overall Trump does better when he completely ignores the trick questions and uses them as an opportunity to recite his administration’s many accomplishments in dealing with the pandemic.
Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. Those are the three elements of the art of persuasion. For trial lawyers, in speaking to a jury, you tell them what you are going to tell them. Then you tell them. And then you tell them what you just told them. Despite his tangled and sometimes head-scratching syntax, Trump is effectively using this formula everyday to ram home his message despite the best efforts of the media to distort and misstate it.
It appears that the reporters are beginning to catch on that Trump is using them as props in what has become the longest-running and most effective unpaid political advertisement in history. Many of them have dropped the veneer of being objective seekers of truth and have become openly rude and disrespectful. That’s a good sign. It means that they are unable to hide their desperation and anxiety as they realize that they are losing their campaign to undermine him in the middle of a national emergency.
Recently, Scott Johnson at Powerline posted “Ms. Stuckey Reports” in which he featured a video by the talented Allie Beth Stuckey that she calls “Every. SINGLE. Coronavirus Briefing is Like This.” I agree with Scott that she deserves a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism. Here’s her brilliant video:
Personally, I think Trump ought to play Ms. Stuckey’s video at the next pandemic briefing so we can watch the assembled media heads explode.
All of which is not to say that there are not serious questions to be asked of the president and his team of expert advisers. On this issue, I am privileged to present an article from my old friend Gordon Wysong. Gordon is an engineer, entrepreneur and former Commissioner of Cobb County, Georgia. For more background on him and our lifelong friendship, click on this link to “A Spook Predicts Trump Will be Re-Elected and a Media Update” which was posted June 2, 2019 on this blog.
In his article, Gordon explains why the “corporate shill” reporters are behaving at the White House pandemic briefings like “immature school children” and gives examples of the “salient, sometimes pointed, and always relevant questions” that they should be asking. Knowing Gordon, I’m sure his engineer’s brain has formulated another thousand or so similar questions that ought to be asked in addition to those mentioned in his article.
I’ve included Gordon’s email address for those of you who may wish to contact him directly.
No One Dare Ask These Questions
Gordon Wysong
April 10, 2020
In repressive societies the members of the press are fearful of the government response to questions that impugn the knowledge or motives of the government and its officials. Reprisals can be swift and cruel. The First Amendment of the US Constitution was a specific and pointed response to the autocratic vagaries exercised by the powerful. It was a Clinical Trial of such freedom.
Nowhere else in the world was protection provided to dissenters, and it tested the self-control of those officials,who heretofore had been able to retaliate with force. There was a reason that the United States became the most successful economic power in history, and much of it related to a Free Press. The trial was a success, and everyone blithely assumed Americans would tolerate the occasional discomforts caused by this freedom as a trade off for its enormous benefits.
But, somewhere in the evolution of big corporate media entities, a crack appeared. While the corporations retained this freedom of the press, their employees did not. Commercial success was a higher calling than Truth –- a siren call to which many players had fallen victim in the past. Recently though, it became not the exception, but the rule, because the flow of information was concentrating in so few hands. The internet was an elixir that helped to restrict this, but it was not a vaccine. It in fact may prove to be another threat, since it too is vulnerable to being controlled by only a few agents.
The public is being treated to the results of this evolution of our free press. Constantly, the public is bombarded with “sound bites” selected from these major corporations and their reporters, and all of them go home happy, having sold their work to a people with short attention spans. Thereporters’ desire for management approval has become a straight jacket, willingly donned by the members of today’s press pool. They value their jobs much more than they value Truth.
Long schooled as back seat drivers, these reporters think they actually understand the doers in America – – and they most certainly do not. They have turned the Covid-19 press conferences into the gotcha Olympics. It isn’t pretty; it isn’t informative; it isn’t intellectually valuable; and it isn’t the reason that the First Amendment was so beneficial. Oh, there’s plenty of room for politics in this affair, and there is surely a lot of it to go around, but playing the corporate shill leaves the reporters looking like immature school children.
There are big questions. Oh yes, there are many. However, none of the MSM reporters will buckle down to the intellectual challenge of asking salient, sometimes pointed,and always relevant questions. A real press conference would showcase questions like these:
Will impoverishing the United States cause a reduction in life expectancy?
Why did Dr. Fauci recommend going on cruises if you were healthy, while counseling for Social Distancing and/or quarantines?
Can we have access to the written recommendations of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx from January 30th to March 31st, so we can know how they came to understand the pandemic’s effect on America?
Wasn’t the original justification for the Social Distancingsimply to prevent a surge at the hospitals, and if so, has that need passed?
In view of the failure to develop a vaccine for HIV, or a long-term vaccine for flu, is there any assurance that a true vaccine can be developed for Covid-19?
If scientists are unable to develop a vaccine, what is the strategy America would employ to counter the Covid-19 virus?
If it takes 2 years to bring a successful vaccine to market, how many Americans will still need it by then?
If public monies are used to develop a successful vaccine for Covid-19, will a private corporation be allowed to patent that vaccine?
If the market for such a vaccine has shrunk because of herd immunity, will the administration of such a vaccine be made mandatory for such activities as military service, school attendance, and health care jobs, as a means of recouping the cost of development?
If we can suspend freedom of assembly and freedom of religion, can we also restrict freedom of the press, which appears in the same Constitutional Amendment? How far can we go with restrictions like these?
Since China has acted as a subversive agent – – unleashing this virus, hiding its danger, hoarding medical supplies, and lying about the continuing epidemic in China – – can we ever again have trade with them involving critical materials? How?
How soon will the US pharmaceutical companies be required to relocate their manufacturing facilities in order to insure the health security of Americans?
Will putting millions of entrepreneurs and small enterprises out of business, serve the interests of America in relocating supply lines from China back to the US?
Will continued attendance of large numbers of China’sresidents in US colleges and Universities pose a continuing threat to the health of Americans – – in other words could this whole thing be repeated?
No, it’s not an exhaustive list. Each answer will generate more questions –- relevant questions. It is a pity that the intellectual heft of today’s reporters is so lacking, that 2 hours a day, focused on one subject, still does not inform the public. The corporate media cabal has winnowed the field of reporters down to this pathetic group, and until science comes up with a spine transplant surgery, it is unlikely to change.
Well said, Spook. Thanks for the insight.
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