Playwright Wajahat Ali, the fastest and most prepared brain on television, was hired at CNN for talking too much about white racism. Because white people buy their products, TV reporters and pundits are instructed not to call Trump supporters racist or anti-Semitic. They are therefore quick to provide reasons as to why white people are attracted to a man who has been charged with 91 crimes. Although they criticize the former president 24/7, they support him by making excuses for those who support him, millions of deplorables and thousands as mentally deranged as the man who attacked Rep. Pelosi's husband.
On December 26, two members of the media elite, Chris Matthews and Tim Miller, said in an appearance on MSNBC that Trump supporters are rural residents who vote for him because Eastern elites insult and ridicule them. Are you saying that the January 6 uprising would never have happened if the Eastern elite had not mocked them? Maybe they bought them a beer?
Rather than ridiculing rural America, American theater, art, television and other media have romanticized this part of the country, from Thorton Wilder's play Our Town to the film Fargo, which portrays Midwestern states as centers of piety. If that's true, then why is a sinner like Trump ahead in Iowa?
Filmmaker Debra Granik presents a more realistic view of rural America in two films, Winter's Bone (2010) and Down to the Bone (2004), about distressed rural communities that resort to meth sales to survive. Places where drug addiction and overdoses among the white working class are so high that white life expectancy has dropped for the first time.
Although some in the media admit that more crime occurs in “red” Republican states than in “blue” states, both Fox and MSNBC emphasize that crime occurs in cities with large black populations. Joe Scarborough, whose show “Morning Joe” has millions of viewers, finds himself caught up in promises as he drives up crime rates in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. He described San Francisco as a place of “madness and chaos.” I responded to him in an essay in Counterpunch magazine in which I recounted three visits to San Francisco around the same time he made this outburst and found no signs of “chaos and madness.” By exaggerating “chaos and madness” in cities with large black populations, Scarborough and Fox News are giving Trump talking points. His speeches are received positively when he speaks of an American crime that has gotten so out of control that black neighborhoods have to be occupied by the army. Under a Trump administration, would I have to show ID to leave my neighborhood?
What are the current crime figures for 2023? According to the FBI, crime fell in almost every category.
Facts also contradict the argument that Trump's supporters are limited to the rural areas where those left behind live. The actual numbers show otherwise. Support for Trump includes members of all social classes, including the Eastern elites who received a nice tax break from the Trump presidency. According to the New York Times, Trump “dominates” Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis “among Republican voters of all ages and income levels, in cities, rural areas and suburbs.” The former president “won 80% of Republican primary voters who do not believe he has committed serious crimes – and 34% of those who believe he has committed serious crimes,” the report continued.
Trump has to be one of the greatest showmen in history. He believes, along with circus entrepreneur PT Barnum, that an idiot is born every minute. Not only is the media Trump's idiot, but the idiot makes money by being kidnapped. Trump knows that saying outrageous things would make headlines 24/7. So the media reacts to his every tweet. He called political opponents “vermin,” which became a topic on television for days, or expressed the wish that President Biden would “rot in hell.” Instead of covering the world like the BBC and Al Jazeera, American media owners assign all-day panels to respond to Trump's tweets, which is entertaining and inexpensive.
Maybe President Biden's poll numbers are low because the media spends so much time on Trump that people think he is the president. This wouldn't be the first time Trump has received more media time than his opponents.
According to data from the Tyndall Report, which tracks nightly news content, between January and November 2015 alone, Trump accounted for more than a quarter of all 2016 election coverage on NBC, CBS and ABC evening newscasts, more than the entire Democratic Party combined responded. The same thing is happening months before the 2024 election. Trump is the omnipresent fraudster who won't go away. He hovers over the American experience like a blimp full of hot air.
Ishmael Reed is an American author of essays, novels, plays and poems. His latest play, The Conductor, can be viewed here.
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