FPI / September 2, 2022

Corporate WATCH

Commentary by Joe Schaeffer

On July 29, we wrote:

The almost-certain return of Donald Trump as the leading presidential candidate for 2024 should prove to be as useful an exercise in uncovering the Uniparty establishment’s agents wherever they may be as 2016 was, if not more.

As the process unfolds, supposedly “conservative” big-box media outlets will not have to be exposed. They will clearly and transparently out themselves.

The process is unfolding.

What follows should not be seen as some bold indictment of a Conservative Inc. media brand that has long lost its ability to deceive readers. After all, is there even a point in hitting out at decrepit zombie publication National Review anymore?

No, what the new wave of Trump-bashing from the “principled conservative media” best reflects is the total approach of a ruling establishment that is still terrified by a man who had the temerity to not only run for president without official regime approval, but to win.

WorldTribune highlighted the New York Post editorial page’s Never Trump ties in our July 29 piece. The allegedly right-leaning paper was at it again on Aug. 29, publishing a ludicrous editorial portraying Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as the underappreciated hero of the Trump presidency. Trump slamming McConnell is “ridiculous,” The Post declared:
 

And not just because Trump handed the Senate to the Democrats with his “stolen election” lunacy determining the December 2020 runoffs in Georgia. That’s what’s allowed Dems to burn trillions, even as McConnell rallied universal GOP opposition.

Fact is, McConnell was crucial to most of Trump’s successes as president, steering his tax cuts into law and getting his judicial nominees confirmed at a record rate.

What is always so telling about published appeals for praise of deeply discredited political careerists such as McConnell is the unmistakably hollow tone they bear. Who is The Post writing for here? Who do they think is going to buy in to this argument?

Truth is, the paper knows it is not going to change any minds, that it is not going to sway a single Trump supporter into suddenly lurching to a pro-McConnell stance. And yet it writes something that serves no genuine purpose, if indeed newspaper editorials are meant to challenge readers via sincere discourse.

Why write it, then?

The sole purpose is to oppose. To go on the record as taking an adversarial position against a movement deemed unacceptable by the powers that be.

The dream of “disqualifying” Trump via professional conservative decree lives on in 2022. It would seem astonishing but there are "conservatives" who still fully cling to the fantasy that the totally discredited Republican Party that existed pre-2016 would be wildly popular across America, if only Trump would get out of the way.

British columnist Dan Hannan wrote in the Washington Examiner on Aug. 15:
 

There was something unmanly about the way his erstwhile conservative critics rushed to abase themselves before him, abandoning their previous convictions and raging at the handful of Reaganite commentators who stuck to theirs. I continue to believe that, had the Republicans seized any of their numerous opportunities to ditch the Donald and replace him with former Vice President Mike Pence, they would now hold both Congress and the White House.

Regardless of what one may personally feel about Donald Trump and his ongoing hold on the GOP grassroots, how can a published political observer hope to be taken seriously in the climate of today writing something so manifestly out of touch with easily visible stark reality?

It’s hard to believe but Never Trumpers still cling to their fantasies that the good old days of Bush-McCain-Romney Republicanism can be restored if only one voices the magic words “Ronald Reagan” enough.

Charles W. Cooke yearns to succumb to his daydreams in an Aug. 25 piece at National Review. Key takeaway: the author freely admits to wishing the will of Republican voters could be thwarted by fiat and openly laments that it cannot be:
 

As a writer who is able to say precisely what he thinks without reference to a constituency or to elections or to the limits of pragmatic politics, I fully comprehend the desire that many feel for the arrival of a single cathartic moment, in which, by virtue of an impeachment or a conviction or a mass awakening of the Republican electorate, Donald Trump is peremptorily confined to the sidelines. As a citizen who lives in the real world, though, I am aware that this is never going to happen — and, worse still, I am aware that attempts to force such a moment may well end up having the opposite effect of the one intended.

There you have it. The conservative media establishment apparatus does not want Americans to be allowed to choose a presidential candidate on their own. Cooke does not worry about the abjectly tyrannical nature of his words. His only concern is that they may ricochet and serve to boost that which in his heart he wishes to proscribe, whether voters like it or not. In so many ways, it’s 2015 all over again.

Facebook-enhanced "pundit" Ben Shapiro is back to his old tricks, using leftist establishment talking points as a way to express an allegedly "conservative" argument against Trump. The Wrap reported Aug. 29 that:
 

Shapiro wrote a lengthy Twitter thread explaining his thoughts on Monday morning, noting that “Republicans are losing steam” ahead of the midterms. Shapiro noted that a large part of the “Democratic upswing” has come as backlash to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade earlier this year, but he added that “there’s something else going on here that represents a deeper problem for the Republican Party.”

That “something else,” in Shapiro’s view, is the continued discussion of and around Donald Trump. He cited the idea of “the Mythology of the Emerging Democratic Minority Majority (MEDMM),” saying that Republicans seem to believe that only Trump could “defeat it.”

The entire Twitter thread can be seen here:
 

The Republicans are losing steam in the 2022 election. There are some reasons for this, the Democratic upswing in the wake of Dobbs being the most obvious factor. But there’s something else going on here that represents a deeper problem for the Republican Party.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 29, 2022

These are the words of someone who can never get on board with a final goal that isn't to only defeat the Democrats, but to deep clean the stables of the Swamp in its entirety, blue stalls and red. “Americans vote against things, not for them,” Shapiro declared. “If Republicans want Americans to vote against [Joe] Biden, they have to campaign against him, not against the FBI or the deep state or on whether Trump had the right to have boxes of classified documents in his closet.”

The lack of logic is jarring. Americans vote against things, but they cannot be expected to vote against the Deep State. And yet, tens of millions of Americans have done just that in two presidential elections over the past six years.

Again, this is the position voters are not allowed to take. Finally, there is Fox News, which is letting its mask slip more and more with each passing day.

An Aug. 22 op-ed headline on its website read: "The Trump Mar-a-Lago search was justified." Enough said. The piece was authored by a lawyer who vents his anti-Trump hysteria on a daily basis on social media.

And what are we supposed to make about a truly bizarre Aug. 30 "news article" which was merely a regurgitation of yet another tedious Trump-bashing column by laughably contrived conservative Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post?
 

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin praised ABC's "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos on Monday for his interview with Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who was pressed on former President Donald Trump's decision to bring documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.

Rubin said Stephanopoulos "put his foot down" during the interview and continually pressed Blunt for an answer to his question: "Was he right to take these documents to Mar-a-Lago?"

"More Democrats should put pressure on Republicans to end their deceitful defense of Trump — and more hosts should ask them about it. Indeed, every lawmaker and every candidate on the ballot this November owes voters his or her candor on a topic that cuts to the heart of danger when cult figures operate with impunity," Rubin wrote.

Never mind the sogginess of the sources cited here. Read the real message they are delivering. The conservative arm of the Uniparty press is playing its part in the reprehensible ruling establishment attempt to ban a populist political movement.

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