By Sam Stone
U.S. mainstream media has, at least throughout my lifetime, always been in the bag for Democrats. If there was a chance to cast a Republican in a negative light, they did. That Republican didn’t have to be Donald Trump. They did it to Ronald Reagan, both Bushes, Mitt Romney, and John McCain. They destroyed one highly-qualified Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork, and did their best to help sink every conservative nominee since. If there was any question – the remotest possibility – that Democrat attacks on Republicans weren’t entirely made up, the mainstream media stood shoulder to shoulder with the left selling them.
What these legacy media outlets are doing now is far, far worse. It is flatly dangerous. They no longer require even the tiniest shred of evidence. They repeat as fact even the most obvious, ridiculous lies coming from Democrat politicians and leftist government flacks. They amplify those lies as loudly and repeatedly as they possibly can, and label anyone who calls them out for peddling falsehoods hateful at best, Hitler at worst. When evidence comes out that entirely explodes their false narratives, they refuse to acknowledge it, some routinely going so far as to claim that such revelations say the exact opposite of what they do.
And they’re doing it in the most inflammatory way possible.
It is beyond hypocrisy. Beyond gaslighting. It’s not even propaganda. What the media is doing at the behest of the far left is most accurately now classified as agitprop – propaganda designed to agitate and enflame the population to unreasoned, irrational action. Take a recent example:
Here’s White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on May 16th claiming that the debt ceiling crisis is on Republicans who refused to do their job and send President Biden a debt-ceiling bill, saying that they are “literally holding our economy hostage”. House Republicans had passed that bill on April 26th, almost 3 weeks prior. And here’s the New York Magazine dutifully repeating KJP’s lie. For good measure, they decided to add a few lies of their own into the mix, asserting – falsely – that prior debt ceiling negotiations haven’t been used to reduce, limit, or restrain growth of the federal budget. This is patently false. Here’s Politico with a rundown of the last 10 debt ceiling deals.Yes, it’s still a somewhat slanted assessment of how those deals came together but, as you can see, whenever the Party in control of the White House was different than the one in control of Congress, they made deals that included all manner of concessions and compromises.
I’m using the debt ceiling here for a specific reason. You can find numerous examples of these types of Democrat lies and media echo-chambering of them in discussions around every single hot button issue of the day, but the vitriol over something as simple, as fundamental to the positions of the two parties, as a debt ceiling negotiation is telling. It's not just that the media is repeating these leftist fabrications, it’s that the language they’re using is specifically designed to inflame a portion of the population, to breed and foment hatred among that group for another group of their fellow Americans.
There is nothing “extreme and irresponsible”- as Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it - about one side negotiating for lower government spending, while the other wants to increase it. This is, quite literally, how our system of government is supposed to work, weighing the interests of different communities and compromising on the outcome. Nor is there anything in the legislation passed by House Republicans that is “extreme and irresponsible,” either. The GOP plan calls for rolling federal spending back to 2022 levels. In case anyone forgot, government spending has absolutely exploded in the last three years. 2020 spending was enormously higher than 2019. 2021 set records again. And this year’s budget has resulted in yet another record-busting federal spending spree.
So why the vitriol from Jeffries and rage-filled media amplifications over a very modest reduction in spending and a reasonable limit (1% per year) on near-term budget growth? The reason is simple, dangerous, and deeply dishonest: Democrats and their media allies are absolutely dead-set on completely tearing down the United States, along with all of our systems and traditions, and they are willing to use physical violence and coercion to bring it about. Democrats in political office and newsrooms around the country have started a civil war. They would prefer it’s a war fought only by one side, just as it was in 2020’s Summer of Love. They want masses of Democrats back in the street, burning down buildings and assaulting anyone who isn’t with them because they know it helped them win the White House for Joe Biden.
In the aftermath of the 2020 riots, businesses around the country colluded with Democrats to ensure President Trump would lose. They vast sums directly bolstering Democrat candidates, suppressed accurate information and promoted falsehoods. They gave a billion dollars to Black Lives Matter, ignoring the fact the movement was basically designed to create hatred and racial division (while enriching the grifters running it, of course, just like they did with the Lincoln Project con-artists they also funded). Why? Why did corporate America line up to throw cash at criminals and cons who were literally burning down their businesses? Because the left promised to roll back and control the protests if the business community caved to their demands. (Which, btw, makes it clear that all that violence was absolutely intentional and directly supported and controlled by national Democrats).
Democrats learned the lesson and – combined with the addictive snort of unfettered power they baselined during Covid – decided that the way forward was to no longer recognize any norms, lie repeatedly, incite more hatred and violence, and count on their media allies to blame the whole evil mess on Republicans.
The problem is that it worked in 2020, is working in 2023, and given the ubiquity of leftists in newsrooms across the country, isn’t likely to stop working anytime soon. So how do Republicans combat these lies, restore norms, and protect traditional American and family values? I think the only answer now is takeover, and greed. GOP mega-donors need to be looking to buy up all the newspapers and broadcast stations they can get their hands on, just like the left has done. That’s one. Two, since that’s not going to be a quick or easy process, we have to use the media’s desperate greed against them: run ads that tell the truth. Run them nationally, year-round. Fund ongoing campaigns to insert counter-messaging on all of the leftist platforms. Buy time for the truth. Because there’s a reason the media is so desperate and unified in promoting leftist falsehoods: like elected Democrats, media members are FAR out of line even with the average Democrat.
If the truth escapes the grasp of the agit-propagandists, they will lose.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Sam Stone only and not his co-host Chuck Warren or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.