Network News And The Wannabe Dictators

FOX's chyron was of course ridiculous hyperbole... The same kind other networks routinely engaged in when Trump was in charge.

On the 13^th June FOX News aired a segment showing a split screen of Joe Biden and Donald Trump giving speeches. Biden’s was from the White House, the usual fare but Trump’s was something a bit different. He was addressing the public after having been arraigned following his indictment on 37 charges of mishandling of classified documents. While no two cases are the same there is a sentiment among Republican voters that this prosecution is politically motivated, citing similar occurrences with Biden and both Clintons. William Bosanko, the chief operating office of the National Archives is on record as saying “every PRA administration since Reagan forward we have found classified information in unclassified boxes.” FOX knows their audience feels this way and so one of the producers cheekily added a chyron to the split screen that read “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”

It was on screen for less than 30 seconds but the executives scrambled, had the chyron changed and then sought to discipline the person responsible who resigned one assumes before he could be fired. That the person responsible was a longstanding member of the Tucker Carlson Show team is almost certainly a factor given the network’s acrimonious split from their one time star anchor.

Despite it being a fleeting moment, the type of “error” that happens all the time in the intricate machinery of a live 24 hour news broadcast, it went on to generate the expected outrage. After all dunking on FOX News is easy, even though every network has gone on to emulate their successful model of blurring the lines of factual reportage and belligerent editorial. It would ultimately lead to groundswell of demands that FOX no longer be broadcast at US military bases, with the highly partizan Alex Vindman of the Ukraine impeachment fame stating that it was “unacceptable to carry programming that directly (spuriously) attacks the Commander-In-Chief of American Armed Forces.” You really have to admire the ability to say something like that with a straight face given the tenor of network news during these Trump years.

Now, I don’t think either man was or is a dictator because I am sane but it would be a Herculean task to list every instance in the media where Trump was called a fascist dictator or compared to the worst monsters history has to offer. In reality if Trump actually was a dictator he remains the only one in history to have been repeatedly thwarted by his own administration, impeached and politically neutered by his rivals, humiliated repeatedly on prime time television on a daily basis and then successfully voted out of office. You really have to wonder when he was planning on using those dictatorial powers he wielded for his single term. In this sense, Biden is really showing him how a president gets things done. So normalised was the insane rhetoric around Trump an article entitled “It’s not wrong to compare Trump’s America to the Holocaust” being run in The Washington Post barely caused a stir. Instead then let’s just pick a few choice instances from the main TV news networks that have all had no issue whatsoever with calling a sitting president a dictator prior to FOX using that label about Biden for a whole 27 seconds.

In no particular order then who could forget the ever awful Joy Reid saying Trump taking off a mask outdoors, while being socially distant from his staff, was a “Mussolini moment?” He’s standing there as if he is a member of the old Russian tsar family” she continued. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to be, I guess it’s his sort of discount Bolsonaro.”

MSNBC liked the “Mussolini moment” quote so much they continued to use it in their programming for the next 24 hours. Anand Giridharadas said on The Last Word “part of why this is happening, part of why we're having these half comic, half absolutely terrifying Mussolini-esque scenes on the balcony of the White House is it benefits trump for us to be living in this eternal present every day.” The Morning Joe show on the same network brought on a “presidential historian” to repeat this quote almost verbatim.

On CNN Don Lemon said America is teetering on the brink of dictatorship with Trump as president. In an opinion piece by Chris Cillizza they said that “the job is president, not dictator” adding that Trump “doesn’t grasp the crucial difference” between the two. They had a panel of totally real regretful Trump voters ahead of the midterms with one referring to Trump as “the dictator in the White House.” Ahead of the 2020 election they said that the Trump administration was “more akin to a dictatorship than a democracy.” On one MSNBC panel the ever histrionic Donny Deutsch repeated lies about Russia owning the presidency, called Trump a dictator and actually called for a presumably violent revolution.

The media also had no problem with making direct comparisons to Hitler. CNN compared Trump to Hitler repeatedly and then covered when he responded to it. The network’s Christiane Amanpour compared Trump’s four years in office to “Kristallnacht,” the initial pogroms that began the Holocaust.

An NBC contributor said one of the most insane things ever uttered on network news, which as you can imagine in the Trump years raised that bar on a nearly daily basis. Frank Figluzzi said that a Trump order to fly flag’s at half mast due to a mass shooting in Texas was actually a secret coded message to neo-nazis because it took place on the 8^th August.

When he wasn’t Hitler and/or the nazis Trump could fill in for any other dictator as suited the media’s needs. Brian Stelter’s now canceled Reliable Sources brought on a professor to say that “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were. He needs to be contained, but he needs to be contained by attacking his policies, not his person.” Rachel Maddow again invoked Stalin and Mao when Trump called a lying (they always omit this part of his quote) news media the “enemy of the people.” Joe Scarbrough repeated this in his morning show. NBC couldn’t decide whether he was more like Charlie Chaplin than Stalin or Hitler which is always a constant problem with the dangerous dictator narrative. Is he an incompetent shitheel or playing five dimensional Jenga to bring about the destruction of American democracy and install himself as God Emperor? You really have to pick a lane and stick to it. Anyway, all of which is to say that it seems perfectly acceptable to call the president of the US a dictator when it is politically expedient to do so. I wonder what the (D)ifference is.

Finally, Bill Maher’s Real Time featured a segment with the aforementioned Deutsch where he stated that Trump was an “all out dictator” and invoked comparisons to Hitler by saying the only people who would remain loyal to Trump would be the “Goebbels” of the group. They then proceeded to go through a checklist of all the ways that Trump was totally a real dictator.

Now obviously I’m no expert on what constitutes a dictator or not. After all, I’m not part of the American liberal intelligentsia that has done so much to raise the standard of political discourse in their country. What I do in all matters pertaining to my own ignorance is turn to the real experts and really when it comes to identifying dictators and if one stands out from the crowd it is certainly Bill Maher. During the Trump years Maher was booked by almost every big media network to repeat the claim that Trump was going to install himself as a “president for life” and wouldn’t leave office. Since Trump left office that claim has now morphed in to “if he gets in again he won’t leave until he’s dead” which when you consider Trump will be 78 and most likely still obese in 2024 isn’t even a particularly scary declaration. Maybe this is why Americans seem so intent on electing geriatrics.

Of course Maher, who himself has had a network TV show cancelled over comments about the World Trade Centre attacks on September 11^th, knows the new rule in entertainment; that as long as you disavow Trump you can pretty much say and do anything else. So even though the hysterical shtick isn’t in keeping with the “grounded, rational atheist” brand he has cultivated over the years, it’s a necessary affectation if you want to not have the journalist class carve you up for an edgy joke or an old tweet.

During this diatribe about Generalissimo Trump, Maher helpfully provided a checklist that would enable anyone to correctly identify if their political leaders were indeed dictators. Now, of course this was crafted not through a deep understanding of political systems or history. It was reverse engineered by listing traits or behaviours Trump has exhibited and picking the most fascisty sounding ones. But here’s the thing… How many of these could apply to Pope Biden? As Buzzfeed would say, before the AI took over, the results might surprise you.

Names on buildings is almost too easy as most significant American political figures get something named after them. Because Biden-Ra the ever living has been in politics for five decades he conceivably has more buildings with his name on it than Trump. There’s the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware, the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Aquatic Center where Joe famously battled his nemesis “Corn Pop,” and The Joseph R. Biden Jr Railroad Station. Oh and there’s the Biden Welcome Center for tourists in Delaware because he really is their most famous son.

I also feel like “appointing family members” is like shooting fish in a barrel when it comes to the Bidens. Not even a concerted effort by the US media apparatus to keep the Hunter Biden laptop story out of the news cycle prevents you from knowing all the ways in which Joe has enriched himself and his drug addled son. In 2020 ProPublica eviscerated  Jim Biden stating that he had “tapped into Joe’s political network for help with his finances, and used Joe’s fame to promote his business ventures.” You can fold in the point about self enrichment here too. Just don’t ask crazy questions about who the big guy is.

Holding scary rallies… This might surprise you considering the only thing scary about Biden’s rallies during the campaign trail were how few people could be bothered to turn up but actually he checks this box too. After all it was only nine months ago when Biden stood at a podium, in blood red lighting and flanked by two members of the military in full uniform, labeling Trump supporters as extremists and stating that the midterms were a battle for “the soul of the nation.”

A far cry from the pledge in his acceptance speech where he pledged to “not divide but unify” but hey this is American politics where even though everything is recorded no-one has a memory longer than a week.

Threatening to lock people up? Oh yeah, Biden loves a bit of that too. It’s a cheap and easy shot to point out the fact that Biden penned legislation responsible for more mass incarceration, particularly of low-income black men, than anyone in the last 100 years in America. Instead if we focus on the here and now it’s not even lost on the DNC adjacent media how weird it is that a sitting president’s department of justice is in the process of attempting to prosecute and imprison one of his leading political rivals. This certainly isn’t helped by Biden’s 2022 quote “we just have to demonstrate that he will not take power by—if we—if he does run. I’m making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next President again.” The best the AP could do in a “fact check” was to point out that it was lacking context because he said it last year. Checkmate.

The military parades claim is a silly one. Bill Maher is an American. He is more than aware of how the fetishize their military. If an American president refused to attend military rallies they would be castigated for not supporting the troops. Here’s some video footage of Joe and Kamala enjoying a military rally.

Now Trump did repeatedly joke about being president for life and suggested he should get an extra term because of how mean everyone was to him. I cannot find any such statement from Biden. However, I will just point out that the supposed most powerful nation in the world elected a man with clear and obvious age related mental impairment because party operatives in the media told them that the other guy was Hitler 2: The Hitlering. Biden is scarily not fit for office and is going to run again at the age of 82. The absolute hubris this takes is remarkable, especially as he has refused to agree to release any medical records relating to cognitive function and is now refusing to debate political opponents because he would lose a battle of wits to a blancmange. Biden is America’s Brezhnev.

Joe Biden absolutely loves other dictators. Who can forget his claim that he spent so many romantic Summers travelling with Xi Jinping or him fist-bumping crown prince Mohammed bin Salman after having begged him to delay a decision on oil output ahead of the midterms. When they didn’t comply there was talk from the Biden administration at “reevaluating their relationship” but they again caved and gave bin Salman sovereign immunity from prosecution in a civil case about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden has also turned a blind eye to the emerging evidence of Saudi Arabian involvement in the 9/11 attacks and continues to avoid the matter in the name of good relations. I’m old enough to remember when we invaded countries that had nothing to do with the attacks based on faulty intelligence reports.

Joe Biden is also, of course, a known and provable prolific liar who has constantly repeated embarrassing fictions about his own life and the life of his family. In a week where the media have once again ignored a stolen valor claim about his son who absolutely did not die serving in Iraq, you have to wonder where all those presidential fact checkers went to. He has claimed he was arrested in the 1970s trying to meet with Nelson Mandela, a total fabrication. In 1987, in one of the most pathetic displays of petulance from a public servant, lied about the number of degrees he had, his academic standing and also claimed he was given a full academic scholarship before challenging a journalist to an IQ competition. Politifact acknowledge it’s a lie but also claim it’s wrong to claim Biden has been lying about his life for decades because he never repeated these specific claims again. He has claimed he was raised in a Puerto Rican community

but also regularly attended black church services as a child

while being a staunch Irish Catholic with the most progressive father of his generation who was seemingly for same sex marriage before Joe himself was. During the Covid-19 pandemic he claimed more Americans had died from the coronavirus than had in WW1, WW2, the Vietnam War and 9 / 11 combined. He has also claimed that when he came into presidential office the vaccine didn’t exist. He is a lifetime politician and is therefore by nature a bullshit artist with the added element that when Trump lied you knew it was just because he was a vapid narcissist. When Biden lies you’re no longer sure if it’s intended or actual fucking dementia. Enjoy your railroad across the Indian Ocean.

The final point about “state run TV” is a weird one given that Maher is the host of a show that routinely attacked Trump during the years of his presidency. Indeed, the entire output of late night TV essentially became therapy for Democrats with segment after cringe inducing segment about the orange man. If you can make it through the John Oliver “Drumpf” segment a second time then you’re a stronger person than me.

Maybe he meant FOX news, you know the network that just fired someone for comparing Biden to a dictator? And it’s interesting isn’t it because the bias in most of the American media is so clear to see to anyone not wrapped up in a delusional little bubble. Like, there’s some real “glorious leader” energy about a press corp that rallies round to debunk claims a bird pooped on the president. They also don’t seem to have much to say about him continually falling over in public or often struggling to hold a coherent thought while giving out speeches. More depressingly what does it say about the media that an order to drone strike and murder 10 innocent Afghanistan civilians, including 7 children, an act for which no-one will be punished, generates little criticism from hawkish newsrooms?

So there you have it. I don’t make the rules but I do like to seem them fairly and evenly applied. Therefore as decreed by Professor Maher and the media outlets that spent four years applying the label of dictator to Trump we can all agree that FOX did need to change the chyron. They should have dropped the word “wannabe” from it.