This week's TDS Meltdown focus was inspired by something that one person wrote, but really addresses an aspect of "reporting" on Donald Trump that is both ridiculous and insidious.
The primary inspiration came from Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, who wrote an Op-Ed titled, "This might be Trump's most inflationary, economically destructive idea yet."
Let's just start with the fact that dutiful Democratic National Committee lap puppy Rampell is running interference for the inflation that Joe Biden has actually caused by speculating about what Trump might do.
It's a mighty big "might," too.
Trump’s objective, Politico reports, is to boost U.S. exports and reduce imports.
Well, I didn't have to read too far to discover the flaw in Rampell's column: Politico is the source.
Politico is the supermarket checkout-counter tabloid of Beltway reporting. Its "Playbook" newsletter is a hackfest of Dem-friendly bias. I know what a biased newsletter looks like; I write one five days a week. I admit mine is biased, though. The Politico kids are still pretending they're doing honest journalism.
Here is the second paragraph of the Politico article that Rampell uses as her leaping off point (emphasis mine): The idea is being discussed by former trade chief Robert Lighthizer — a potential Treasury secretary pick for Trump and the architect of the former president’s bruising tariff campaign against China — and policy advisers allied with him, according to three former Trump administration officials granted anonymity to discuss confidential policy plans.
Ah...the good old "former Trump administration officials" anonymous source ploy. Since Trump rose to political prominence during the 2016 presidential campaign, 99.99% of the false reporting about him was rooted in an anonymous source. Much of it was based on a single anonymous source, which is like saying — shout out to REO Speedwagon — "Heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who..." well, you know. The last credible lone anonymous source was Deep Throat.
Why do former Trump administration officials even need to be anonymous anymore? There certainly isn't any financial downside to being a former Trump insider who bashes him in the mainstream media. Heck, it's a veritable grifter gold rush out there for those people.
The only reason to be a Republican insider who leaks Trump info anonymously is if the one doing the leaking is a rudderless slimeball who hopes to remain employable no matter who is in charge of the GOP. If that's the case, they're completely untrustworthy.
Objective journalism in the mainstream media had been on life support for a long time before Donald Trump was elected president, to be sure. The plug was then pulled, and the corpse incinerated on a funeral pyre of lies on November 8, 2016.
Back to Rampell's oh-so-earnest concern about what Trump might do to make inflation worse. This is the Democrats' 2024 playbook in a nutshell: start with some projection, then dress it up in a SCARY TRUMP MONSTER UNDER THE BED costume and hope the low-info Dem base will be frightened enough not to notice Biden's havoc.
They hope to scare moderate Democrats, Republicans, and independent voters as well, of course. That's not an easy sell when it comes to the Biden economy. "Hey, we know everything sucks right now, but Orange Man Bad is totes going to make it suckier" isn't much of a pitch.
As we wrap up this week's TDS Meltdown installment, let us think back on what the pre-pandemic Trump economy was like.
You smiled too, didn't you?
The "Trump will tank the markets and ruin the economy!" rhetoric began the moment he clinched victory in 2016. None of the dire predictions by the leftist talking heads came to pass. They're unreliable on any topic, of course, but especially so when trying to sell the idea that Trump will be a detriment to the American taxpayers and who is far worse than President LOLEightyonemillion.
And the failure rate of the ones based on anonymous sources is almost as bad as that of lib beta males hitting on attractive women who don't hate themselves.
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