Though there are other candidates for the post, it appears that the two leading contenders to take the disgraced Donna Brazile's place as the head of the Democratic National Committee are Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison and former 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean.
It appears that one of the requirements to be DNC head is being on the record as equating Republican and conservative politicians and officials to Hitler or his party. Ellison did so to George W. Bush when he was president by treating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and the 1930s Reichstag fire in Germany as equivalent events. Dean was more blunt on Sunday, applying the "Nazi" tag repeatedly and remorselessly to Steve Bannon, President-Elect Donald Trump's recently selected chief strategist and senior counselor.
Several recent NewsBusters posts have demonstrated that the press is failing to disclose Ellison's sordid past.
Though, like Ellison, Dean's history of rhetorical intemperance goes back well over a decade, his casual, reckless employment of the German N-word in a Sunday morning Canadian TV interview may be his most despicable visit to the gutter on record:
Transcript (longer segment is here):
HOWARD DEAN (on Trump): He's a complicated guy. He appoints a reasonable person, who's much more conservative than I am, but somebody you can talk to as chief of staff, and then his senior advisor is a Nazi. I mean, what, you know, what do you do with that?
REPORTER: Slow down, this is interesting. You're talking about Reince Priebus —
DEAN: Right.
REPORTER: — is the Chairman of the Republican National Party, right? He's now his chief of staff.
DEAN: Right.
REPORTER: Steve Bannon, who ran something called Breitbart News —
DEAN: Which is a far-right, anti-Semitic publication.
REPORTER: You called him a Nazi?
DEAN: Well (counting with his fingers), he's anti-Semitic, he's anti-black, and he's anti-women.
REPORTER: He's openly said, "I'm part of the, quote-unquote, Alt-Right."
DEAN: That's right.
REPORTER: He's Donald Trump's chief strategist. What does that tell you?
DEAN: It makes me very nervous. I mean, it calls into question Donald Trump's judgment, and that's the problem. So we don't know what to expect to from Donald Trump.
REPORTER: You know when people say, people like to throw around this word "Nazi." It's a pretty big word.
DEAN: It's a big word, and I don't usually use it unless somebody's really anti-Semitic, really misogynist, really anti-black —
REPORTER: Do you really believe he is that, I mean again, you —
DEAN: Look at, you go look at Breitbart News —
REPORTER: I have.
DEAN: — and you make up your own mind.
REPORTER: Look, some will say Donald Trump's daughter married Steve Kushner, who's an orthodox Jewish guy. How do you square the circle?
DEAN: That's a very good question. I have no idea how he squares the circle.
Translation of Dean's final response: "Don't bother me with inconvenient, discrediting facts when I'm in the middle of a baseless smear."
As would be expected, a search at the Associated Press on "Howard Dean Nazi" (not in quotes) returns no results. Searches at the New York Times and the Washington Post returned no results referring to Sunday's interview.
A Google News search on "Dean Trump Nazi" (not in quotes, past week, showing duplicates) just before noon Eastern Time on Monday returned only four relevant results, none of which are from establishment press outlets. As to the excuse that it's barely been 24 hours, far less intemperate remarks by Republicans and conservatives typically hit the major establishment press sites and get spread far and wide within hours.
The establishment press isn't covering Dean's and Ellison's track records or their outrageous remarks because it is desperate to portray the Democratic Party and its officials as reasonable people, giving them free rein to go far-left in the background. Meanwhile, the press routinely paints Republicans and conservatives as extremists, bigots, and the worst dreck of humanity.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
