Stephen Colbert called out the media for treating Trump’s crimes like a regular political story that is part of the horse race coverage of the election.
Colbert said:
Those three are just today and tomorrow. He’s also facing the January 6th trial in Washington D.C., the classified documents case in Florida, Colorado trying to throw him off the ballot for insurrection, and his appeal of the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, in which a jury has already found that Trump committed sexual assault. And yet, people want to hire this maniac to be president.
In light of all of that, I’d like to make a brief public service announcement: This is [f-ed] up. I know we’ve become numb to it. And is not normal. No other candidate for the presidency has had to end himself in multiple courts. And I’d like to point out that in all seven of his cases, no one doubts that he did these things. We’re just sitting around patiently waiting to find out if the wheels of justice will grind fast enough for there to be any consequences.
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And the media is covering it like any other political story – it’s all horse race. But in this horse race, one of the horses is old, while the other one is old, has hoof-in-mouth disease, and keeps quoting horse Hitler!
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Stephen Colbert was right. One of the reasons why the election coverage is so frustrating is that the media continues to minimize or ignore Trump’s criminal trials as a part of the campaign. It is as if the press decided that the criminal trials are just another facet of an election.
When they are the opposite of normal. The United States has never had a former president plot a return to the White House while they are facing 91 criminal felony counts. None of this is normal and should not be covered as normal.
The press is doing a disserve to democracy and the nation. Trump’s alleged crimes are not business as usual, and the press needs to stop treating Trump like he is any other candidate.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association