Sunday, October 13, 2024

Something is…weird.

Almost on a dime, the Google News page today is different. To be clear, it’s still overwhelmingly negative for Trump (in a class case of projection, CNN, PBS take one random phrase he said during his rally and used it to prove that Trump plans on using the US military to punish his political enemies…despite all the abuse of political power going in the other direction for the last 4 years).

But the Harris side is shockingly negative. There’s the usual piece by Fox News, but there’s also the Hill talking about drops in voter registration, MSNBC talking about how disastrous Harris’s “press tour” with hard-hitting journalists like Howard Stern and Stephen Colbert, and NBC admitting that Trump is even with Harris in national polls (which, if true, would mean an electoral college landslide for Trump).

You’ve seen that I’ve been doing this every day since Harris took over as the nominee. You also know that the mainstream media does nothing by chance: everything is orchestrated. That leads to these possibilities:

  • The media is deliberately downplaying Harris’s chances in order to paint a story of her being the “underdog” and having an unprecedented resurgence to victory in the last three weeks (likely coupled with a few “October surprises” they’ve been holding off on).
  • The media is genuinely worried that their incessant cheerleading has lulled Democratic voters to a false sense of security.
  • The media is covering their butts in the case of a Trump victory, citing these articles as “proof” that they’re not biased and using Sunday night (a time of very low readership) to dump these stories.

Whatever the case, let’s see if this reverts back on Tuesday.

Monday, October 14, 2024

So, the green on the Harris side has come back a little, but there is still a surprising number of negative and neutral headlines for Harris. The big “scoop” from Reuters is that Kamala Harris might appear on the Joe Rogan podcast, which is interesting because Trump has already confirmed that he’d be on the podcast and you can see that there’s been no mention of it at all (nor any mention of the dozens of podcasts that Trump has been on).

If you’re wondering why Harris is considering going on Joe Rogan the answer is—she has no choice. Her team will play it in one of two ways. First, just like in the debates have her go in with negative expectations, so that if she survives one hour she’ll be seen as

The focus of the home stretch will be continuing to paint Trump as “unhinged”.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

The die-hards like Vanity Fair and The Atlantic continue to stay faithful to their cause until the bitter end, mocking how Harris called Trump “f***ing nuts” and depicting an introspective, humanizing moment of Trump on the campaign trail as him “breaking down onstage” But mainstream outlets are either playing it either straight or—gasp—doing actual journalism. The BBC reports her as “slipping”, the Washington Post said she “failed to catch fire with black men”, and NBC News notes that Michelle Obama is not helping her.

To the lefties out there, fear not. Trump is still getting all bad press. The New York Times continues to talk about his “threats to political opponents he deems ‘the enemy'” (gee, what will he do to them? Build a false impeachment case against him? File bogus lawsuits against them? Undermine them in the mainstream media every day?) Politico talks about the “billionaires powering Trump’s super PACs” without any sense of irony of how the Democratic machine is being funded by far larger and more numerous billionaires. The Post continues to portray his campaign as “erratic”, NBC as “bizarre” and CNN as “bobbing and weaving”. All opinions they’re entitled to have on their editorial pages, but why is Google News showing them on its hard news pages?

Wednesday October 16, 2024

The Harris campaign was clearly hoping to repeat the Biden strategy in 2020—hide in the basement and let the media define you from your past. Unfortunately for Harris, there’s aren’t as many things in her past for the press to use as source material. And so dropping in the polls, they were forced to roll the dice on an interview with Fox News.

It didn’t work. Her interview was all the things you’d expect. Evasive. finger-pointing, confusing. Of course that didn’t stop the media from trying to put their best spin on things:

  • The New York Times – Fox News is attacking her with “Trump Talking Points”
  • The Independent – Harris is bravely withstanding a “fiery exchange”
  • AP – Harris is bravely entering “enemy territory”
  • NPR – Harris gets a “do-over”
  • ABC – Harris paints Trump as threat
  • Washington Post – Harris “clashes with host” (the brave warrior motif again)

The sad thing is, the vast majority of people seeing the headlines in their Google Discover feed or their Microsoft Start page will never bother to view the actual view. Which is as cringe as cringe gets.

In the meantime, the leftist media continues to throw everything from their old kit bag at the wall to see what sticks. It’s like the Fourth of July fireworks when they need to set off all their remaining fireworks. MSNBC has a breaking story about…Stormy Daniels. NBC is talking about false 2020 election claims. The Guardian is finding people leaving Trump rallies early and painting it as if they represent the thousands and thousands of people who stayed. The Independent continues to cite an outdated poll showing Harris as having “the edge”.

Thursday, October 17, 2024

I thought that the disastrous Fox News interview for Harris would be completely memory-holed by now, but shockingly it was The Hill who came out and admitted it was a disaster (before, of course, explaining that it was the media who set her up to fail, not her own incompetence). Politico also is sounding some alarm bells. But notice what The New York Times and NBC News do. They report that Trump is going to a “charity event”, the Al Smith dinner. What their headlines don’t say is that it was a slap in the face to Catholics for Harris to decline their invitation. Politico is the only outlet that came out and said it.

In the meantime, the New York Times continues with mocking Trump’s supposedly “meandering speeches”, USA Today is eagerly “breaking” the story of a new book that reveals that Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump don’t like each other (what a shock) and Axios is dragging January 6 out of cold storage…again.

Friday, October 18, 2024

There are several headlines that reveal how panicked the left is. The New York Times asks incredulously, “Why the Heck Isn’t She Running Away With This?” Believe it or not, MSNBC called Brett Baier’s Fox News interview a “double-standard” because while Harris was on her “blitz of interviews” with hard hitting news outlets like Colbert and The View, Trump was only giving three-hour speeches at rallies, and three-hour interviews on every podcast you can think of. If ONLY he would let himself be interviewed by the mainstream media and his words cut up into sound bites that would be used to attack him the rest of the campaign, why, that would be “fair”.

Trump’s stamina is incredible. He’s doing things at 78 years old that would exhaust people of 38. Of course, the media is taking his moments of looking tired or cancelling interviews and—now that Biden is out of the way—able to talk about “how very old” he is.

The biggest omission of all was Harris snubbing the annual Al Smith Dinner in New York City. This was spitting in the face of American Catholics—the Al Smith dinner is one of those mandatory political events of every presidential campaign but evidently Harris’s advisors told her not to embrace the Catholics for fear of making her pro-abortion supporters angry. She ended up taping a video that made things even worse. Of course, all the New York Times had to say is that it was “awkward” because Trump (as all speakers at the Al Smith dinner do) told a few “roast” type jokes (he and featured speaker Jim Gaffigan both killed, by the way). Harris supporters are clearly trying this best to memory hole the whole thing.

Saturday, October 19, 2024

By now, the disastrous Fox News interview has been completely memory-holed, to the point where AP is bold enough to publish a headline saying that Bret Baier admits to “a mistake”. Remember, no one is reading the article; they’re all bought in to the MSNBC headline (still there) that the Fox News interview was the result of an “ugly double standard” because Baier was rude enough to practice…real journalism?

In the meantime, a tongue-in-cheek post to Truth gets painted by CNBC as Trump “seething”. And have you noticed how Kamala is suddenly really, really angry on the campaign trail? That’s part of Act III. Where she brings her righteous anger and indignation that the loathsome Donald Trump would ever be president again.

The Harris campaign and her handlers were obviously hoping for another lifeline similar to the one they got out of the debate with this “week of interviews”. Unfortunately, her “triumphant” interviews with the friendliest of talk shows were bookended by disastrous interviews with 60 Minutes (which 60 Minutes desperately tried to clean up) and with Fox News (which Fox News did not, leading to charges of “double standards”).

Without that, they’re going to their last resort: driving progressive voter turnout (or suppressing conservative turnout) by reinforcing all the lies they’ve worked so hard over the last 9 years to build, and hammering them home. The Guardian calls Trump “unstable and unhinged”. The Washington Post talks about Trump’s “profane insults”. CNN reminds is that “military leaders” hate Trump (really). Politico talks about a “raunchy joke” (aimed at turning off suburban moms). Rolling Stone doesn’t pull any punches: Trump threatens voters by saying “I will let you die”. NPR makes sure to remind people that Trump will be deporting people (aimed at tricking first-generation immigrants into thinking Trump is not talking about dangerous illegal aliens).

Clearly the marching orders have gone through: stop reporting and just pick at the scabs to turn them into raw wounds that’ll get Harris voters out.

Strap yourselves in, folks. It’s just going to get uglier from here.