DAN GAINOR: With Iran in the crosshairs, press return to their favorite Trump smear

America is now in the process of getting rid of the enemy that has dominated headlines in the Middle East for nearly fifty years. Naturally, some in the press are targeting…the president Donald Trump With ridiculous new allegations buried deep in Epstein’s files. Why? Because journalists still believe they can drag Trump into the mud, even in the midst of war, and win the election for Team D.

If this sounds familiar, it certainly is. This has been the media strategy since Trump first decided to campaign as a Republican and subvert the left’s plans for world domination. The press has resorted to every false claim it can find: claims of Russian collusion, “mostly peaceful” riots, claims that… Hunter Biden The laptop was 100% fake. Remember that Politico headline from October 19, 2020, just in time to influence the presidential election? “Hunter Biden Story Is Russian Disinformation, Dozens of Former Intelligence Officials Say.”

Now we know the laptop was real and full of scandalous information about President Biden and his family, which is why the truth was buried under a mountain of lies from Trump haters and the journalists who love them. They were protecting their guy – the “big guy” – from laptop fame. In fact, it was so big that he ended up pardoning his son Hunter Biden before he even left office. All 51 intelligence officials lost their security clearances, but they did the damage they wanted. The press and social media companies hid the truth.

Even Katherine Maher, NPR’s notorious left-wing CEO, admitted during congressional testimony that the outlet had failed in 2020: “I want to say that NPR acknowledges that we made a mistake in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more forcefully and sooner.” Of course, Biden still controlled the White House, NPR got proper funding, and the GOP was defeated. NPR won the treble.

This is the context for another Trump scandal allegation. Everywhere the media went this week, the goal was to have two names in the headlines together: Trump and Trump Jeffrey Epstein. It doesn’t matter if this is an allegation, it is an old and unproven claim. Why bother backing down? All that matters is trying to hurt Trump.

The press was every bit on board. There are the embittered folks at NPR, now vastly poorer thanks to Trump, offering this headline: “DOJ Releases Some Missing Epstein Files Related to Trump.” Or Radar Online with the tabloid-style headline: “Missing Epstein Files Contain Explosive Trump Assault Allegations Made by Pam Bondi Hours after Congress summoned her.”

Dan Gaynor: Trump defeated the press like David defeated Goliath. Can they recover?

Some of them cannot hide their identity. the The leftist Daily Beast Several articles have been featured on the story, including this classic: “Accuser Reveals Creepy Nicknames Trump Allegedly Used with Epstein.” It included a subtitle worthy of a gender studies major: “EWWWW.” The author of this story, Daily Beast reporter Katherine Burris, was an American studies major, according to her website — and it shows. Consider this quote: “I understand the feeling of helplessness when faced with the looming specter of patriarchy.”

Or her pro-trans complaint in one of her other articles: “Babes in TERFland.” Boris at least doesn’t pretend to be neutral. From that article: “I don’t pretend to be an impartial witness, just as I’m not neutral when it comes to other forms of intolerance. I don’t think journalism (or whatever I’m doing here) needs to be neutral in the face of oppression and injustice to be effective.”

This is an important perspective as journalists grab pitchforks and torches for the billionth time, convinced this time that they will defeat the Orange Man Bad.

One interesting point is how some in the press are now terrified of Trump — or, more likely, his lawyers. Trump has scored two massive lawsuit victories against ABC and CBS since returning to the Oval Office. The two networks agreed to pay several million dollars in legal settlements. Now, when the media covers Trump, they are more cautious. Many of them chose to use the word “unconfirmed” in their articles – which I’m sure pleased their lawyers and accountants. The Los Angeles Times, CBS News, and the Associated Press all fall into this category.

Other news organizations have gone for a form of “prosecution,” another safe word favored by counsel. These include our friends at CNN, The Guardian, and The Hill. MS NOW has already covered its bases with Trump’s “baseless claims.” This is a two-word score in Scrabble — the legal version.

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This kind of institutional CYA (Cover Your Claims) shows that this latest batch of stories is mostly not worth the paper they are not printed on.

Back at the height of the press actively censoring the Biden laptop story, The Washington Post published an opinion piece arguing that we can’t trust the claims either way. This was what the same outlet would have called a non-denial denial in the Watergate years. Here’s the headline: “Insisting that Hunter Biden’s laptop is fake is a trap. So is insisting that it’s real.” Schrödinger’s propaganda for the nerds out there.

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It was the subtitle from that op-ed that really rings true almost 10 years later: “The lesson of 2016 is to be more cautious about potential misinformation in 2020.” This is what we are dealing with here, in the middle of a war where our enemies have turned the Internet into a battlefield, trying to endanger our forces and bombard us with lies. Where the lives of thousands of Americans are on the line every second, and where the men and women who protect us risk everything to do so. Because President Donald Trump and America do too At war with Iran. The press is at war with Trump.

The late, great President Ronald Reagan advised us to “trust but verify.” We must update this warning to the old media: “Don’t trust – they’ve earned it.”

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