The morning raid on former Trump aide John Bolton's home has not yet been explained. But the media bias can be demonstrated by how the spin is different next to raids by the Biden-era FBI on Trump loyalists Paul Manafort and Roger Stone and the raid on Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago. Longtime Obama-loving ABC News reporter Terry Moran tweeted on Saturday morning:
If this happened in any other country, we would know what to call it: The autocrat taking revenge on a man who angers him. A man who dares to criticize him.
The most important thing in American life right now is to see the thing in front of your face, and name it.
But three summers ago, Moran wasn't questioning the FBI at all. Biden wasn't an autocrat taking revenge. Moran was touting the FBI line that the Mar-a-Lago raid was resulting in an eruption of violent rhetoric from Trump backers:
MORAN: It's an extraordinary warning. The FBI, joined by the Department of Homeland Security, issued a stark bulletin to state local and tribal law enforcement right across the country warning of quote, an unprecedented increase in threats and acts of violence directed against FBI personnel and other government officials. These threats are just erupting right now on pro-Trump social media and other online platforms, and some of them get very specific.
The bulletin cites a dirty-bomb threat targeting the FBI headquarters here behind me in Washington, as well as the targeted killing of judicial and law-enforcement personnel involved in that Mar-a-Lago search. All this coming after the killing of an armed suspect outside the FBI’s field office in Cincinnati, the FBI saying that these kinds of threats, calls for armed rebellion and civil war are erupting more and more by the day!
The ABCNews.com story that contained Moran's video from reporter Pierre Thomas aims to explain why the raid on Trump's home was justified.
It's time to compare liberal journalists backing the Mar-a-Lago raid and railing against the Bolton raid. Brianna Lyman of the Federalist made a list, starting with Chuck Todd:
Former NBC host Chuck Todd said on X: “The senators who were bullied into confirming Kash Patel, how are you feeling today? It’s not like you weren’t warned that this guy would be comfortable politicizing the agency. Trump couldn’t have done this without the weak senate GOP enabling.”
Todd is the same person who, after the raid of Mar-a-Lago, said Republicans unifying around Trump were merely “under[cutting] faith in institutions.” Todd (along with three other NBC writers), told readers to “remember” that the FBI would only conduct a search with a “warrant” showing “probable cause” and therefore, Republicans should have preached “calm, or even measured caution” instead of reacting to the raid.
Todd's article included hot takes from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and then it concluded:
Republican lawmakers and candidates on the party’s fringe have taken it even further, calling for steps like defunding the FBI.
It’s all a reminder of the state of our current politics — any allegation that Trump committed wrongdoing is treated by most Republicans as a loyalty test of the former president. Lather, rinse, repeat.
