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Can we talk about “obvious”? Per @brianstelter’s question here. Trump’s racism has always been fairly obvious. For decades, even. It’s not the only thing. The only way his record as a sex predator could be more obvious would be if he’d assaulted a woman on camera.
Was Trump’s charity phony? Obviously, and (thanks to @Fahrenthold) this is extensively documented. Has he cheated on his taxes? Obviously. Is he compromised by foreign intelligence services (ordinarily, BTW, not an “innocent until proven guilty” thing)? Pretty obvious.
Trump’s personal corruption; his rank, stinking, putrid ignorance of nearly all matters of public policy nearly all of the time; his habitual lying (again, documented extensively by @ddale8 & many others)? It’s all obvious, and has been since long before he became President.
But let’s return to the racism. Trump dislikes black people. He made his feelings about Hispanics clear in his freaking campaign announcement. He makes occasional exceptions for minorities with money & those willing to pay him abject, fawning deference — categories....
...that include his only two minority Cabinet officials, who run minor departments rarely in the news. If Trump could win re-election with only white votes, that’s what he would — or will — try to do.
Incidentally — or not — Trump’s racism represents the views of a significant number of Republicans. It may not have gotten him elected President, but it certainly got him nominated. This is a significant political fact.
So just what threshold of “obviousness” is @CNN using when it comes to Trump and racism? Let’s ask a more pointed question: is CNN’s news judgement on this point entirely independent of its commercial interests?
Let’s just say there is reason to doubt this. Trump has, after all, helped CNN’s ratings in the past. Some of his admirers watch CNN programming and patronize CNN’s advertisers. Have @brianstelter, @andersoncooper & other CNN journalists (personalities, whatever)...
...tip-toed around Trump’s flagrant racism (& depraved personal morals, corruption, etc.) in the past to avoid a commercially damaging reaction? Are they doing it now? Is Trump the only subject about which news coverage & @CNN’s business interests might be said to be related?
I generally don’t ascribe great importance to the details of news coverage. They matter, but not as much as people who follow the news closely all the time think they do. This is not a detail.
There are tens of millions of Americans who count themselves in some way as members of racial, religious or ethnic minorities. America would not be America without them. If the President of the United States does not have their best interests at heart, that is news. Obviously.
