Hillary Clinton granted an interview to the socialist British newspaper The Guardian. Here’s the headline:
US media must ‘get smarter’ to tackle Trump, says Hillary Clinton
Exclusive: former presidential candidate criticizes media for failing to challenge Trump
Failing to challenge Trump? Which media is she talking about?
It’s all Fox’s fault. And President Trump’s too. Trump was exasperated Hillary in her chat with the UK paper. Among the jewels:
* “Clinton also offered a stinging rebuke of the Republican party’s base, saying it had become enthralled by the president’s ‘insults and attacks’ and entertainment and spectacle….The Republican party has collapsed in the face of Trump.”
* "She said Trump had proved himself skilled at “tweeting and insulting and dominating the news cycles” and said he was too often left unchallenged by the press. “I believe that where we are now in the political cycle is that the press does not know how to cover these candidates who are setting themselves on fire every day, who are masters of diversion and distraction,”
* "[O]ften the quest for balance resulted in facts being relegated in favour of opinion. 'If you’re into both-side-ism – so, you know, on the one hand this, and on the other hand that – really there’s no factual basis, there’s no evidence, there’s no record. Everybody lies, everybody gilds the lily. It doesn’t really matter. That just opens a door to somebody like him.'”
* "Clinton said Trump was 'quite a student of authoritarian regimes and how they manipulate and control people….He is someone who craves dominance over any situation he finds himself in. He craves adulation, flattery, all of which fit the profile of leaders we can remember from the past.'”
*“One of the ways you do that is by consistently attacking the press. Now [Trump] doesn’t attack Fox News, because they’re like a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump and the Republican party now. So he attacks the press and the broadcast media that raise questions about him, that don’t give him fidelity and loyalty.”
* “You watch Fox News, it’s always, ‘Something terrible is about to happen’, ‘Something terrible did happen’, ‘These people are doing all these awful things’. It is totally divorced from reality, but it is superb propaganda. I don’t know the best way to puncture that. You have to hope that reality catches up with politics and entertainment at some point.”
There was more. Oh so much more of this in an interview. The Guardian says was held shortly before the 2018 midterms. But make no mistake - she reserved her serious fury for Fox News.
What always amazes when liberals talk about conservative media is their utter lack of self-awareness. Hillary being a Grade A example of the breed.
Take those last two gems about Fox News. Fox is a “wholly owned subsidiary of Trump and the Republican party (sic) now.” First of all, she seems clueless about the actual news shows that dominate Fox during the day. Shepherd Smith or Bret Baier or Chris Wallace are “wholly owned” by the GOP and Trump? Really?
I realize this interview was conducted before the election, but it doesn't take long for this anti-Fox talk to look silly. Days after the vote came this story about Fox News that ran in The Washington Post. The headline?
Will Fox News survive as a house united? A look at the cable network’s ongoing drama in the Trump era.
In which the Post reporter Sarah Ellison alleges tension between Fox News anchors and its pundits. It almost seems to irritate that the liberal paper that is itself one of the pillars of the liberal state media has to run - well down in the story - this:
“The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta noted recently in a conversation at Advertising Week New York that Baier’s show is more expansive than the average. “ I get more news about the Middle East on Bret Baier at six o’clock than I do at CNN.”
And totally in character, whether it is Hillary talking to The Guardian or this particular story on Fox by the Post ,there is no understanding of the irony of how they sound.
The simple fact of the matter is that for decades the media of the United States was absolutely dominated by liberals. Whether it was “Uncle Walter” Cronkite or Dan Rather over there at CBS or Tom Brokaw at NBC or Peter Jennings at ABC, the three broadcast networks consistently -- day in and day out -- produced not newscasts but the news as viewed through the prism of the American Left. To see this in action today all one has to do is watch any of those same three networks or the cable news as presented by MSNBC and CNN, not to mention the print and cyberprint versions that are the New York Times, the Washington Post and others. Individually and collectively these outlets form the Liberal State Media. In 2016, in that media world, Hillary Clinton was the sure-thing next president.
Let’s just take a minute to go back again to 2016 and sample the Liberal State Media at work as the election was getting on.
The New York Times: Hillary Clinton has an 85% chance to win.
Reuters: Clinton has 90 percent chance of winning: Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation
The Huffington Post: HuffPost Forecasts Hillary Clinton Will Win With 323 Electoral Votes. This particular liberal state media story began this way: “The HuffPost presidential forecast model gives Democrat Hillary Clinton a 98.2 percent chance of winning the presidency. Republican Donald Trump has essentially no path to an Electoral College victory.”
The Washington Post: This one was special, from the Post’s “conservative” columnist Jennifer Rubin (hint: she’s not conservative) predicting this: This week alone: 10 reasons Hillary Clinton will win
Again, these are mere samples of the similar stories that were pronounced as gospel by the Liberal State Media in 2016. They are typical of the reality that has Hillary and her fellow liberals so furious. Everyone of these stories was produced by “journalists” who in reality are acolytes of the Left. And for decades it was people like this who had an iron-fisted dominance of the news and the commentariat.
Thanks to Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, not to mention the advent of Rush Limbaugh and talk radio with Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham and countless others on both national and local shows -- not to mention the Internet -- the monopoly of the Liberal State Media is gone with the wind, and gone for good.
But as that newly released Hillary interview with The Guardian shows vividly, the American Left and its various stars and legions are still furious and foaming at the fact that they can no longer funnel Left wing propaganda as “news” and “facts” - and go unchallenged. What Hillary Clinton accuses of Fox is merely projection of what the Liberal State Media was in its heyday - and is still desperately trying to be - “superb propaganda” which gives “fidelity and loyalty” to the likes of Hillary Clinton herself, not to mention husband Bill, Barack Obama and more or less any liberal on the scene.
And the very fact that two years after her defeat Hillary Clinton is still talking like this says exactly how effective conservative media has become.
