Did Kamala Harris lose her mind after it was discovered that Fox News had edited a segment to make Donald Trump sound sane? No -- because that's something only unhinged wannabe dictators do.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
If you read this headline and thought to yourself: “That’s crazy. I gotta read this story and see what kind of authoritarian nonsense is going on here,” then you are absolutely right. It would be nuts for a presidential candidate to call for a TV network, even one that is a blatant propaganda arm of the opposing party, to be investigated and lose its license for selectively editing an interview or event.
Obviously, that is precisely what Donald Trump has been doing because he is upset about an interview Vice President Kamala Harris did with 60 Minutes.
The GOP nominee has been ranting and raving that CBS did something “illegal” and engaged in the “greatest fraud in broadcast history.”
That’s ridiculous bordering on insane, of course.
Perhaps Trump is mad that it became known that he refused to also do an interview with 60 Minutes because he did not want to be fact-checked.
In any case, if he is upset about a network editing an interview or other political event, he must be livid about what Fox “News” did.
Hoping to give Trump a leg up in the presidential race, the MAGA propaganda outlet staged an event with the GOP nominee at a barbershop in which he answered the question of young Black and Latino men — a demographic he hopes to win on Nov. 5.
However, since the former president barely makes sense these days, the network had to do some heavy editing to create the illusion of a sane and knowledgeable candidate talking to potential voters, according to a CNN review of a “more complete version” of the event.
For example, it cut out a seven-minute “weave” (which is what Trump calls his word salad) that followed the question of a participant who asked about whether the former president would eliminate federal taxes in a second term.
So, is this the “greatest fraud in broadcast history?” Hardly.
Did Harris melt down in several online rants and call the edits “illegal”? Absolutely not.
And she would even have more of a case than Trump if she did so. It is a scandal that Fox gets to pretend to be a news channel when its sole mission is to get Republicans elected and pollute the minds of its viewers.
But that’s not enough for the network to lose its license.
Democratic presidents haven’t even banished Fox from the briefing room, which is something that should happen. After all, Comedy Central and the Cartoon Network, both of which are just as much news stations as Fox, also don’t get a presence in the White House.
All of this is just another illustration of the difference between the two candidates.
Harris wants to play by the rules of democracy.
Trump, on the other hand, wants to be an authoritarian and punish all of his “enemies.”
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often funny analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
