Media Give Hillary A Pass
October 1, 2016 at 5:32 a.m.
By Gary [email protected]
It’s not as if the heads of media outlets sit around a conference table somewhere and plot against conservatives.
But if you watch how things are covered, it’s easy to see how liberal politicians aren’t covered with quite the same critical eye as conservative politicians.
Again, it’s not a conspiracy, it’s just that the vast majority of people in the media identify as liberals, so they tend to be a little harder on conservatives.
As far back as I can remember, it’s always been that way, but with this election cycle, it’s off the hook.
They used to at least try to put up a front of subjectivity, but no more.
The national media hates Donald Trump so much, they will do anything to tilt the scales toward Hillary Clinton winning the election.
I could cite example after example, but there was a fairly jarring one this week.
During the debate, Hillary Clinton raised the case of Alicia Merchado.
She was the Miss Universe contestant who Trump hectored for gaining weight.
No argument that Trumps comments about Merchado were boorish. Point conceded.
But who in the Clinton camps thought it was good idea to hold up this Merchado woman as some paragon of virtue who was so ruthlessly victimized by Trump?
Turns out, in her native Ecuador, Merchado was implicated as the getaway driver in a murder attempt.
The following is an excerpt from New York Magazine’s NYMag.com. (I would not necessarily characterize this as a conservative news outlet.)
The piece chronicles the Hillary surrogate Merchado’s accusations against Trump, but then points out:
“... Machado also has a story ripped straight from a reactionary radio host’s darkest fever dream. It’s not every day that Rush Limbaugh can accuse a Clinton surrogate of being involved with attempted homicide and judicial intimidation — and have a substantive basis for those claims.
In 1998, Machado was accused of helping her boyfriend escape from the scene of an attempted murder.
The male lead in this complex plot is Miss Machado’s rugged boyfriend, Juan Rafael Rodriguez Reggeti. He had a sister, who, eight months pregnant, jumped off a fifth-floor balcony. He, allegedly, blaming her husband for the suicide, sought revenge by firing two shots at him just after the funeral. The husband was hit but survived. Mr Rodriguez fled in a car driven, say the police, by Miss Machado.
The investigating judge, Maximiliano Fuenmayor, issued an arrest warrant for Mr Rodriguez. But Miss Machado, who claimed she was ill at home at the time, seemed to be in the clear, for the moment anyway. It was a short moment. Within hours, Mr Fuenmayor had a telephone call from her. He says she threatened to ruin his career and have him killed. She admits she rang, but says it was merely to thank him for his unbiased pursuit of justice. Mr Fuenmayor says she in fact threatened him with her powerful friends, from — supposedly — President Rafael Caldera down.
Machado was never convicted of any crime. But the idea that she called up the judge who had her boyfriend arrested to “thank him for his unbiased pursuit of justice” is the kind of audacious alibi one might expect from Machado’s former employer.
And then there’s the whole “alleged affair with the leader of notorious Mexican drug cartel” thing. In 2010, Univision reported that Machado had had a child with José Gerardo Álvarez-Vázquez, a.k.a. “El Indio,” a trafficker who worked with the armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel.
There also are reports that she posed topless in a Mexican version of Playboy and did some racy scenes in soap operas, that were confirmed by snopes.com.
Snopes.com could not confirm the existence of alleged sex tapes and porn films.
So why in the world would Hillary Clinton trot this woman out in front of the world?
I’ll tell you why.
Because if you watch CNN or any other national media outlet, you wouldn’t even know about all that stuff. It’s not in the mainstream. Hillary gets a pass.
Until Friday, that is, when Trump alluded to her questionable past via some early morning tweets. Prior to that, the only source promoting such concerns were a handful of conservative outlets such as Limbaugh and Breitbart News.
I think Hillary’s people expected she would get a pass. They had to know about this woman’s past and they were willing to take the calculated risk.
I can just hear the conversation in the Hillary war room: “Hmm, she’s got a checkered past, but she makes Trump look bad. Let’s go for it! The media won’t hold us to account for her misdeeds.”
Now let’s flip that around.
Let’s say Trump paraded around a judge-threatening, topless posing, racy soap opera actress accused in a murder plot as one of his surrogates.
Do you suppose the national media would cover that?
You know the answer.
It’s not as if the heads of media outlets sit around a conference table somewhere and plot against conservatives.
But if you watch how things are covered, it’s easy to see how liberal politicians aren’t covered with quite the same critical eye as conservative politicians.
Again, it’s not a conspiracy, it’s just that the vast majority of people in the media identify as liberals, so they tend to be a little harder on conservatives.
As far back as I can remember, it’s always been that way, but with this election cycle, it’s off the hook.
They used to at least try to put up a front of subjectivity, but no more.
The national media hates Donald Trump so much, they will do anything to tilt the scales toward Hillary Clinton winning the election.
I could cite example after example, but there was a fairly jarring one this week.
During the debate, Hillary Clinton raised the case of Alicia Merchado.
She was the Miss Universe contestant who Trump hectored for gaining weight.
No argument that Trumps comments about Merchado were boorish. Point conceded.
But who in the Clinton camps thought it was good idea to hold up this Merchado woman as some paragon of virtue who was so ruthlessly victimized by Trump?
Turns out, in her native Ecuador, Merchado was implicated as the getaway driver in a murder attempt.
The following is an excerpt from New York Magazine’s NYMag.com. (I would not necessarily characterize this as a conservative news outlet.)
The piece chronicles the Hillary surrogate Merchado’s accusations against Trump, but then points out:
“... Machado also has a story ripped straight from a reactionary radio host’s darkest fever dream. It’s not every day that Rush Limbaugh can accuse a Clinton surrogate of being involved with attempted homicide and judicial intimidation — and have a substantive basis for those claims.
In 1998, Machado was accused of helping her boyfriend escape from the scene of an attempted murder.
The male lead in this complex plot is Miss Machado’s rugged boyfriend, Juan Rafael Rodriguez Reggeti. He had a sister, who, eight months pregnant, jumped off a fifth-floor balcony. He, allegedly, blaming her husband for the suicide, sought revenge by firing two shots at him just after the funeral. The husband was hit but survived. Mr Rodriguez fled in a car driven, say the police, by Miss Machado.
The investigating judge, Maximiliano Fuenmayor, issued an arrest warrant for Mr Rodriguez. But Miss Machado, who claimed she was ill at home at the time, seemed to be in the clear, for the moment anyway. It was a short moment. Within hours, Mr Fuenmayor had a telephone call from her. He says she threatened to ruin his career and have him killed. She admits she rang, but says it was merely to thank him for his unbiased pursuit of justice. Mr Fuenmayor says she in fact threatened him with her powerful friends, from — supposedly — President Rafael Caldera down.
Machado was never convicted of any crime. But the idea that she called up the judge who had her boyfriend arrested to “thank him for his unbiased pursuit of justice” is the kind of audacious alibi one might expect from Machado’s former employer.
And then there’s the whole “alleged affair with the leader of notorious Mexican drug cartel” thing. In 2010, Univision reported that Machado had had a child with José Gerardo Álvarez-Vázquez, a.k.a. “El Indio,” a trafficker who worked with the armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel.
There also are reports that she posed topless in a Mexican version of Playboy and did some racy scenes in soap operas, that were confirmed by snopes.com.
Snopes.com could not confirm the existence of alleged sex tapes and porn films.
So why in the world would Hillary Clinton trot this woman out in front of the world?
I’ll tell you why.
Because if you watch CNN or any other national media outlet, you wouldn’t even know about all that stuff. It’s not in the mainstream. Hillary gets a pass.
Until Friday, that is, when Trump alluded to her questionable past via some early morning tweets. Prior to that, the only source promoting such concerns were a handful of conservative outlets such as Limbaugh and Breitbart News.
I think Hillary’s people expected she would get a pass. They had to know about this woman’s past and they were willing to take the calculated risk.
I can just hear the conversation in the Hillary war room: “Hmm, she’s got a checkered past, but she makes Trump look bad. Let’s go for it! The media won’t hold us to account for her misdeeds.”
Now let’s flip that around.
Let’s say Trump paraded around a judge-threatening, topless posing, racy soap opera actress accused in a murder plot as one of his surrogates.
Do you suppose the national media would cover that?
You know the answer.
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