I was going to begin my headline with “Comedy Gold,” but it would have made it too long.
On MSNBC’s Wednesday episode of “Morning Joe,” one of the failing network’ssuper-failing shows, left-wing New Republic editor Michael Tomasky — demonstrably annoyed by President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive election win over Vice President Kamala Harris — hilariously trotted out what he believes is the reason Trump overcame multiple hurdles to win back the presidency.
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In the process, Tomasky inadvertently threw the left-wing media under the bus.
In Tomasky’s TDS-riddled mind, “right-wing” media is responsible for Trump’s popularity. The left-winger singled out Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, calling out the media tycoon for “injecting so much poison and so many lies into our discourse.”
Jonathan Lemire, who will officially join Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Willie Geist on “Morning Joe” in January, kicked off the festivities (emphasis, mine).
So, Michael Tomasky, in your latest article for the “New Republic,” which is titled, “The Real Reason Why Americans Approve of Trump’s Disastrous Transition,” you write in part this.
“How can it be, you may be wondering, that 55% of Americans tell pollsters they approve of how Donald Trump is handling the transition? He has nominated almost, but not quite literally across the board, unqualified extremists.I don’t blame people,” you say. “I blame the larger culture, which has been almost totally drained of common concern about our civic health.”
“First and foremost, I blame Rupert Murdoch and, to a lesser extent, his imitators, whose media properties have injected so much poison and so many lies into our discourse since 1977 that common civic agreement about basic morality in public life has become impossible.”
[…]
“We had a basic understanding about what kinds of actions did and did not reflect our best values. And this was why Richard Nixon had to resign in disgrace for committing far fewer offenses than Trump already has. Everyone, whatever their politics, agreed that Nixon had clearly crossed a line. But that impulse is dead in the United States, and the right-wing media killed it.
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Hmm.
Not to nitpick, Mr. Tomansky, but what have Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski done or said that “reflect our best values,” other than histrionically warning (lying) that a second Trump presidency would mark the end of democracy in America as we know it, including the end of presidential elections?
And while we’re at it, what has MSNBC’s blatantly racist host Joy Reid done to reflect our best values, other than repeatedly comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler, calling him a white supremacist, and otherwise trashing him?
And don’t even get me started on the lady geniuses of ABC’s dopey show, “The View,” and their daily nonsensical diatribes about all things Trump Derangement Syndrome.
After Lemire asked Tomansky if he had any hope that the “damage” done by “right-wing media” could be repaired, the New Republic editor appeared to be crestfallen.
Uh, I’m not very hopeful about that, Jonathan, unfortunately. You know, John Dean famously said a few years ago that if Fox News had existed in 1973-74, Richard Nixon would have survived Watergate. I think that’s probably true.
So here’s the thing. Whether we’re talking about “right-wing” or “left-wing” media, a television show, a movie, a song, or anything else, it wouldn’t have an audience if it didn’t appeal to enough people to make it popular.
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Amusing Denial and Deflection on Display at MSNBC in the Post-Election Ratings Landslide
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As the ratings of CNN and MSNBC continue to swirl down the toilet faster than Michael Moore eating a large sack of McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and Cheese, and their ratings are continually dominated by Fox News, one — an objective one — can come to only one reasonable answer: Fox News is more in tune with a majority of Americans than are CNN and MSNBC combined.
If that wasn’t true, why didn’t the likes of “Morning Joe,” “The ReidOut,” and other Trump-loathing programs carry the day, and the disastrous presidential campaign of Kamala Harris as well?
That question was rhetorical, of course.