Hey John,
You’ve probably heard by now that Donald Trump promised a “blood bath” at a rally over the weekend if he loses in 2024.
The comment has drawn intense media coverage, even for Trump. Here are just a few headlines from recent days:
Let’s be clear – Trump is irresponsibly using violent rhetoric here, but is that anything new?
As President, Trump tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in the wake of the George Floyd protests. In the hours before the January 6th riot, he told supporters to march to the Capitol, adding “you’ll never take our country back with weakness.”
And just last week, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that Trump asked him whether he could shoot Black Lives Matter protesters in front of the White House.
So why the wall to wall media coverage of Trump’s remarks? Why the phony “debate” over what Trump meant by the phrase “blood bath”?
We’ll tell you why this is happening and why it matters in a moment, but if you’re ready to help COURIER fight sensationalized media coverage with high-quality, unbiased reporting, can you chip in $10?
Alright, so let’s answer the question. After so many previous threats of literal violence or examples of violent rhetoric, why are Trump’s “blood bath” comments getting so much coverage?
Since he entered politics, legacy media have struggled with how to cover Trump. They’ve lurched from covering him non-stop to taking great pains to barely cover him at all.
The reality is that no approach can work, unless the media fearlessly and constantly calls out Trump for who he is: a reckless, narcissistic autocrat who’s willing to undermine democracy and stoke violence to take power.
And that’s the problem with turning on the outrage machine every time Trump says something violent or stupid. It backfires and the media’s natural instinct to cover “both sides” of an issue eventually reduces Trump’s constant violent, dictatorial behavior into a fake media debate more suited to football than it is the future of American democracy.
And, this type of coverage only helps Trump. Since the blood bath “controversy” started, Trump has doubled down and used the media attention as a way to raise buckets of money for his campaign.
John, COURIER was founded to fight back against the legacy media’s failures to stand up to Donald Trump. We will never go against our values just to increase our clicks or our bottom line.
That means we will always, always call out Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters for their assault on democracy.
And, instead of trying to make a buck from the latest made up controversy of the day, we provide unbiased, factual news about the issues that matter most in our communities we serve.
|
Express Donate: If you've stored your info with ActBlue Express, we'll process your contribution instantly:
|
Thanks,
The COURIER team