The hysteria about Donald Trump's return to office is really something to behold. From Trump critics believing that he wants to kill them to reporters warning that Trump will send them to jail if he's re-elected, the level of surreal expectation of disaster is something I've never seen or experienced in nearly 50 years of writing about politics.
I don't have to tell PJ Media readers where I stand when it comes to Donald Trump. But opposition from many leftists to Trump's candidacy has morphed into an insane, fervent, almost religious crusade. There's no reasoning with these people. There's no rational argument that can convince them that the hysteria that has gripped them and now controls them is, if not in error, then certainly exaggerated fear-mongering.
Instead of trying to tamp down the madness, Biden is feeding it. Speaking to reporters, Biden raised the probability that reporters would go to jail.
“Two of your former colleagues not at the same network personally told me if he wins, they will have to leave the country because he’s threatened to put them in jail,” Biden told Katie Couric. “He embraces political violence,” Biden said of Trump “No president since the Civil War has done that. Embrace it. Encourages it.”
The author of this Salon piece, Brian Karem, is the former senior White House correspondent for Playboy. He was put in jail for not revealing a confidential source in a criminal trial involving the death of a police officer. He wasn't jailed for what he wrote or his ideas. He was jailed for contempt of court.
In 2023, Karem wrote an article alleging that "MAGA and Christian nationalism" were bigger threats to the United States than Hamas. He had his White House press pass suspended three times.
But the was never put in jail for writing outrageous stupidities. That hasn't stopped him from sounding the tocsin about Trump.
My experience tells me that Donald Trump means exactly what he says, and there are plenty of politicians who would do the same if they had the chance. Worse, in covering the Hamas war, a record number of reporters have been murdered in an attempt to silence those of us who risk it all to inform others. Those in power do not want us to inform everyone else about what is going on. To do so would be to risk losing control over the masses.
How long shall we tolerate politicians who are so hungry for power that they will risk destroying us all to get it?
Why didn't Trump throw reporters in jail during his first term? Why didn't he have them killed like Vladimir Putin has killed several reporters over the last 25 years? What is it about Donald Trump that drives Karem and other reporters to such heights of delusion that they apparently fool themselves into believing they're in danger?
It's pure, unadulterated arrogance.
The press, of course, are rascals in their own right. But the difference is we cannot do anything but report vetted facts, although many times we do that poorly – often because of government intervention – directly and indirectly. We remain trapped by the politician who owns the pulpit and can operate the levers of power. The politician can jail the reporter. The reporter cannot jail the politician. We also remain trapped by the public who’ve been manipulated by the government into thinking we’re the problem.
Blinded by an outsized ego, displaying a smug superiority over the rest of us who are being "manipulated" because we don't believe what he believes, Americans are in more danger from Brian Karem than any politician.
He and reporters like him have made journalism a sewer.
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