During wall-to-wall coverage of the impeachment trial on Saturday night, CNN’s Don Lemon interviewed GOP media consultant Rick Wilson and New York Times contributor Wajahat Ali. What ensued has become the 2020 version of Hillary Clinton’s "deplorables" moment OF 2016.
Don Lemon isn’t a journalist. He’s a leftist-liberal commentator.
Most of the once venerable and trusted lineup of CNN anchors can now be classified that way. Some might say that Fox or Newsmax can be accused of the same behavior, but there is more balance to their coverage than either of their cable competitors.
They also take the Left seriously and don’t dismiss socialists as uneducated fools.
The point here isn’t about the state of journalism.
It’s about how what once were news outlets are now platforms for political ideologies.
While they blame the caustic tone of our politics on President Trump, whose freewheeling and direct style at times crosses some boundaries, many news outlets hypocritically drive division, intolerance, derision, and hate for those who disagree with their editorial viewpoint.
Now viewed more times by an order of magnitude than its first airing, this clip of an anti-Trump Republican and two media hacks lays bare what many liberals who live in blue state bubbles think about conservatives, Republicans, and middle America.
It’s insulting on its face but, even more so, because the liberal media doesn’t care and doesn’t think it will matter.
It mattered in 2016, and will do so again in 2020, especially in terms of real votes.
The fact is, the "deplorables" moment wasn’t presented to us by a candidate is also instructive for 2020 voters. This election, more than 2016, is about not only pushing back against the arguably anti-American governing philosophy of the left. It’s about Americans sending a message to the tech, entertainment, education, and news industries that we will not allow them to unduly influence our elections or the direction of our country.
The news industry, higher education complex, Hollywwod all want President Trump to lose.
Even if you dislike President Trump’s style, allowing these narrow interests seeking daily to indoctrinate Americans toward anti-freedom policies — to control the process —will leave us with a very different country than the one in which we currently live.
Americans — even Democrats who are watching their party being taken over by radical ideologues — should resist the kind of rhetoric from any force that labels segments of the population as stupid, ignorant, unenlightened or not "woke" enough to be taken seriously.
If CNN’s commentators laughed at such suggestions aimed at a racial minority it would, justifiably, be no laughing matter. If you’re a "deplorable" however . . . anything goes.
Don Lemon gave Americans a wake-up call last weekend.
Let’s remind the Fourth Estate and political hacks who really runs this country.
Hint — It’s not them.
Tom Basile has been part of the American political landscape from Presidential campaigns to local politics. He served in the Bush Administration from 2001-2004, as Executive Director of the NYS Republican Party and has held a range of senior-level communications roles in and out of government. Basile's critically-acclaimed book, "Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq" (Foreword by Amb. John R. Bolton), chronicles his time in Baghdad fighting media bias and driving fairer coverage of the Iraq war. In 2011, he was featured in Time Magazine's Person of the Year spread about political activism around the world. Basile is an adjunct professor at Fordham University, a local elected official and runs a New York-based strategic communications firm. He is a member of the New York Bar and sits on a number of academic and philanthropic advisory boards. Learn more about him at TomBasile.com or follow him on Twitter @Tom_Basile. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.