It was the greatest victory in Iowa’s political history — a blowout by former President Donald J. Trump, with more than 50% of the vote. Yet when he stood to give his victory speech, the propaganda-driven news media silenced him. Haughty, arrogant and pandering to its Far Left base, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow explained why.
“The projected winner of the Iowa caucuses has just started giving his victory speech. We will keep an eye on that as it happens, we will let you know if there’s any news made in that speech, anything noteworthy, anything substantive and important. The reason I’m saying this is, there’s a reason we and other news organizations have stopped giving an unfiltered live platform to former President Trump,” she said. Then she added, “There is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.”
For years, Maddow lied about the Trump Russian Hoax. She lied about the validity of the Hunter Biden laptop with its explosive disclosures about the corruption of the “Big Guy.” And she and her colleagues lie — or often ignore — the crisis at the border. And never, not once, has she apologized. Now would be a good time.
In fact, Trump’s speech was the news, its tone extremely conciliatory, an olive branch to an electorate in the middle who disdain Trump’s vindictiveness, urging them to come together to save the country. He praised his rivals in Iowa, former SC Gov Nikki Haley and Florida Gov Ron DeSantis, saying they “actually did very well.” He said Vivek Ramaswamy—who dropped out by endorsing Trump—did a “hell of a job.” And he called for unity. ““I really think this is time now for everybody, our country, to come together,” Trump told his supporters. “We want to come together, whether … Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative. It’s going to happen soon.”
Elsewhere on election night, commentators expressed disbelief at exit polls that showed an overwhelming of Trump supporters in Iowa believe the 2020 election was rigged. “We know that’s not true,” insisted ABC’s Martha Raddatz. This is part of the “deplorables” narrative — you know, the one that portrays anyone who wanted electoral integrity — like Voter ID and a ban on illegal migrants voting — as dumb.
I think it was at this point in the evening that I began to realize that the media will never give up claims that President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. This is the Big Lie that separates us. It is the hill the media will die on, the paradigm that requires calling the Jan 6 riots “an insurrection,” (while the BLM riots in the summer of 2020 were “mostly peaceful protests”), the fortress that propels Biden to keep targeting “extreme MAGA Republicans.” I wonder if he knows MAGA means Make America Great Again, as in: Close the border. Open the oil spigots. Roll back the regs. Stop transing the kids or destroying women’s sports. Restore America’s meritocracy.
This morning I read an analysis in UnHerd, a thinker’s magazine published in Britain. Historian Michael Auslin of the Hoover Institution asked the question, “Is Iowa the next step to civil war?” He argued that America’s first Civil War took decades to fester to full-blown combat between North and South, decades in which so many efforts at reconciliation — the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, and the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act — came to naught with the shelling of Fort Sumter in 1861.
As Abraham Lincoln warned during his 1858 Senate campaign, two years before his presidential election, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
But I wonder, are we really divided, or is our fraught relationship fueled by a media industrial complex intent on keeping us apart? Imagine if the media covered the border crisis, documented the physical injuries of female athletes forced to compete against biological males, called out the DOJ for throwing the book at Jan 6 protestors while not arresting pro-Hamas rioters who threatened the White House?
What I know of the press corps in Lincoln’s time suggests the media was always a machine of biased sensationalism. Fairness is not in journalism’s economic interests.
But the other thing I noticed in the election night coverage from Iowa is that TV talking heads never once mentioned the emotional anger of Trump supporters. This is undeniable: every time some DA threw the book at Donald Trump, or some court or secretary of State tried to remove him from the ballot, his polling numbers increased.
Update: Turns out MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki DID make the connection between Trump’s blow-out win in Iowa and the fury of his base. Pointing to his graphics, Kornacki said, “It is unquestionable when you look at these numbers and if you were to apply all the legal dates that popped up throughout the year to this, they triggered a rally-around-Trump effect among core Republicans. Again, they clearly see this as politically motivated. They see this as Trump’s opponents using the legal system to go after him. They responded that way by rallying around him. You literally see it, the week of that first indictment.” Added CNN’s Harry Enten, “Trump’s two biggest days for fundraising, one was when he was in the courtroom being arranged in New York, in Manhattan court. The other one, when Trump was booked in Fulton County jail the day of the infamous mug shot. Both of those days he raised well over $1 million.”
So they know. Trump’s base is furious at the abject election interference of the Dems’ current lawfare campaign, seeing it as yet another infringement on their rights as citizens, as voters, as Americans. But this somehow escaped the attention of most elite commentators. Overwhelmed by Trump Derangement Syndrome, invested in the narrative of Orange Man Bad, they cling to their mantra, even as their ratings slide. To admit that their actions had caused the Trump electoral tsunami, well, that would be like acknowledging all the lies they tell with impunity.
Speaking of Trump's Iowa victory--Iowa has 99 counties, all but one county voted for Trump. The one county that didn't vote for Trump is the county where the University of Iowa is housed. Oh, and Trump missed wining the U of Iowa county by ONE vote! Be afraid Biden supporters, be very, very afraid.
Amazing !!!!!!!