NBC News demonstrated again this morning that it's wildly anti-Trump. Check out this headline: "To Welcome Trump, Poland Taps Old Communist Party Playbook." So not only does NBC and MSNBC compare Trump to communist (and fascist) dictators, now foreign leaders who might make him look good are like communists. Reporters Ali Vitali and Corky Siemaszko began:
Back when Poland was part of the Soviet bloc, the Communist Party would bus people into Warsaw from the provinces to ensure there was a compliant crowd to welcome high-level visitors from Moscow.
Now with President Donald Trump heading to Poland this week for a day-long state visit, the country's right-wing government is tapping the old playbook.
"Every deputy from PiS [the Law and Justice Party] is allowed to invite 50 people to Trump's Thursday appearance in Warsaw and the party will pay for the bus," Joachim Brudzinski, vice-marshal of the Polish parliament, said in a message to party members.
Michal Kobosko of the Atlantic Council, a longtime observer of Polish politics, said the ruling Law and Justice party is pulling out all the stops to make sure the Trump visit is a success — though this particular tactic is not without irony, given party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski was an anti-communist dissident.
There is no "irony" here. The "irony" is that NBC News went easier on the Polish communists back in their heyday than they are to a pro-Trump party. If it's a Communist tactic to bus in your supporters, how does that apply to every leftist rally in Washington D.C., like the "Women's March"? Did they use "Communist" tactics to build a supportive audience for Madonna and Michael Moore?
The NBC reporters briefly acknowledged "Trump might even hear some cheers from average Poles," who after all, voted in this pro-Trump party. But they also quoted Columbia University professor David Phillips:
“Trump is their kind of guy. Trump and the current Polish leadership share an ultra-nationalist world view.”
Poland, along with Hungary, has defied the European Union with its refusal to take in Syrian refugees. The Duda-led government has also been criticized by the EU for moves to limit press freedom and accused of undermining the Constitutional Tribune, which is the nation's highest court.
Meanwhile, [party leader Jaroslaw] Kaczynski's inflammatory statements about Muslim migrants and refugees have drawn comparisons to Trump, who will head to the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, after his visit in Warsaw.
We might suggest it's "inflammatory" to compare Trump's hosts to communist dictators. The NBC dispatch also concluded with a swift kick:
And what do Polish-Americans make of Trump’s trip to Poland? “I think the fact that Trump is going to Warsaw is going to reassure a lot of them that he’s not Putin’s puppet," [Thaddeus] Radzilowski said. “Still, he’s a pretty flawed messenger as far as most Polish-Americans are concerned. To many Poles, he’s like the loudmouth at the end of the bar.”
A year ago, President Obama was in Warsaw for a NATO summit. NBCNews.com ran a pretty sterile AP dispatch on the visit, and nobody at NBC or AP lurched for communist or authoritarian metaphors as the story concluded:
Warsaw may become the most highly-secured city in the world during the summit, which takes place after a string of recent extremist attacks across the globe.
Helicopters hovered Friday above the National Stadium, the meeting's venue, while 6,000 police officers, backed up by soldiers, gendarmes, firefighters and other security officials, were out on Warsaw's streets.
Security efforts are most heavily concentrated at the stadium, which has been encircled by a metal barrier, and high around hotels hosting the many VIPs. Many streets in the city of 1.7 million have been blocked and some mass transit routes altered, inconveniencing many residents.
