I continue to be amazed at how the liberal media not only gave Donald Trump a pass again and again for his outrageous behavior while he was both a Presidential candidate and a President, but I also find it somewhat disconcerting that this same media continues to cover his current antics as if they constitute real news.

              I am referring, for example, to a major op-ed piece in The New York Times last week, which was an interview with Jason Miller, who has been one of Trump’s most fervent liars and promoter of MAGA nonsense over the last four years.  The interview was nothing more than free advertising for a new, right-wing media platform called GETTR, which Miller runs, calls itself a ‘marketplace’ of ideas but is really just another attempt to maintain a social media presence for the alt-right.

              In this interview, Miller stated his intention to give internet space to people like Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Dinesh D’Souza (who happens to be one of the most flagrant racists contributing to the immigration debate) and other pro-Trump liars who have been ‘deplatformed’ by the social media mainstream over the last year.

              So now ‘fake news’ is no longer a term which only applies to the print media that had the audacity to occasionally write something less than positive about Donald Trump. Now the term will obviously be used to sanction any internet-based communications vehicle which doesn’t totally and fully promote the alt-right. 

              I’m sorry, but if The New York Times wants to continue referring to itself as the ‘paper of record’ but prints this crap, the masthead should read that they are the ‘op-ed of record’ because this vulgar and false promotion of Donald Trump is simply not news.

              At the same time, I have to give The New York Times credit for publishing a story this week which really does put the whole media – Trump issue into a proper perspective. The reporter, Ian Philbrick, has aggregated and compared news reports of right-wing versus left-wing political demonstrations over the first six months of Trump’s administration in 2017 versus the first six months of Joe’s administration in 2021.

              Guess what? The average number of political protests supporting Trump each week in 2021 has never (read: never) been but a tiny fraction of the number of political protests of groups opposed to Trump in 2017.

              In other words, for all the media coverage about the ‘new wave’ of alt-right populism which ‘exploded’ under Donald Trump, the actual amount of real-time, in-the-street activity on his behalf was never remotely close to the number of anti-Trump events that his presence provoked.

              And yet, if you had followed liberal media coverage of Trump from when he first walked down the staircase at Trump Tower to announce his Presidential candidacy on June 15, 2015,  to when he humped onto Air Force One at Andrews for the last time on January 20, 2021, you would think this guy had been the founder and leader of the most powerful and most significant political movement this country has ever seen. 

              Know why Trump received 74 million votes last year? Because not just Democrats, but Republicans also voted for the first time by mail. And although only one-third of all mail ballots were marked for Trump, let’s not forget that Trump spent the entire 2020 campaign saying that any mail ballot was tantamount to election fraud.

              Worse than the liberal media adoration for Trump has been the continued attempt to picture Trump and his mega-supporter movement as a ‘threat’ to American democracy, never mind the American ‘way of life.’

              Granted, the January 6^th assault on the Capitol was a terrifyingly-extraordinary event. And to their credit, The (failing) New York Times has put together a really spellbinding, 40-minute video of what happened before, during and after  the riot itself.

              But the idea that the stampede up the Capitol steps represented some kind of existential threat to American democracy has about as much reality behind it as the possibility that I will stay on my diet for the next couple of days.

              In that regard, what Joe said is absolutely correct. Want to take on the U.S. government? Bring your F-15.

              Back in May, Donald Trump’s website registered 27.3 million hits.  Know how many he got in July?  Try 3.6 million.

              Here was his first statement today: “Our Country has never been so diminished. It has reached an all-time low!”

              And this guy’s coming back to lead the GOP?