Few topics create as much hypocrisy as executive use of power.
Quick🧵comparing how the press has covered Biden’s vaccine mandate announcement vs. Trump’s threat to override governors on houses of worship.
Spot the difference? ⤵️
Back in May 2020, President Trump said he would override governors who wouldn’t allow houses of worship to open. Yesterday, President Biden said he would do the same about governors who wouldn’t enforce a vaccine mandate.
Can you spot the difference in how @CNN covered it?
Honestly, this could’ve been a thread just dedicated to @CNN.
Can you spot a difference in tone when it comes to who supports each approach?
Definitely not rooting for a side here, right, @CNN?
This presented without comment.
But it wasn’t just CNN
Here’s @AP, a supposedly neutral wire service, in how they frame each president’s decision, both of which quickly drew legal challenges.
If these were written by a Dem comms team, what would be changed?
I continue to find it interesting where media outlets feel compelled to point out a potential lack of authority vs. when they don’t. @abcnews
Will we get a “Biden seizes” headline, @washingtonpost? Or are those only for Republicans?
Again, you’ve got headlines from corporate media outlets that read like Biden press releases. That’s bad.
I fear that, at the current rate, I’ll have to do a full thread on this one on Monday.
But to repeat myself for the 6201052nd time: overstepping government authority should not go from bad to good just because your team did it.
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Biden’s disastrous debate performance brought to a screeching halt a multi-year campaign from the media to present the president as mentally fit.
Do you really remember how hard the press pushed you not to trust your lyin’ eyes on Biden’s decline?
Start here ⤵️
I suspect most of you remember the allegations from the White House that videos showing Biden behaving erratically were “cheap fakes.”
The media rushed to repeat this claim. Look at the extent @nytimes went to say you didn’t see anything and that Biden was fine.
Perhaps the wildest was @washingtonpost, who gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to videos showing Biden displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as fakes, “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype.”
Part of their defense was that Biden “doesn’t dance.”
You remember Russian Collusion. But do you remember the “Russian bounties” allegation, where the press ran with a conspiracy theory to make Trump look like a monster?
With the debate tonight, I think it’s timely to revisit a falsehood Biden pushed. Follow along ⤵️
It started with a scoop from @nytimes that claimed Russia had placed bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan, that Trump knew about it, and he did nothing.
Days later, @washingtonpost followed up with the claim that these bounties—again, allegedly ignored by Trump—led to the deaths of American servicemen.
Do you *really* remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? I fear we’ve lost the plot.
With Hunter’s name in the news I wanted to revisit the extent to which the media went to cover up corruption allegations against—and at the behest of—his father.
Follow along. ⤵️
You have to start with the scoop from @nypost and @EmmaJoNYC.
Their lede from October was damning:
“Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.”
The story was fundamentally about Joe Biden’s alleged corruption. It was huge news, on the eve of an election.
The press leapt to claim the scoop wasn’t legit. And they reframed the issue: now it was about Hunter, not Joe. Here’s @NPR before/after
Good to see the NYT’s considerable resources being put to finding the truth in a debate between private citizens that led one of them to raise a flag upside down.
Real afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted stuff here.
It has only become “news” because of the pivot to left wing clickbait that Trump inspired among the press.
It’s politically inspired harassment and not only is it noxious it’s driving a deep animus among its target demo that is fraying what remains of the bounds of our body politic and society more broadly.
I’ve got an oldie-but-a-goodie for you from the archive of unhinged media coverage.
Do you remember how insane the coverage of Trump’s killing of Iranian Gen. Soleimani was?
I bet it’s worse than you remember. Follow along ⤵️
It all started with what I’ve gotta say might be the coldest presidential use of social media in history.
After ordering the strike that killed Iranian General Qaseem Soleimani, Trump tweeted out simply a picture of an American flag.
Many in the media went berserk.
First, the issue was directly with what Trump had done. Outlets claimed that he was rushing America into a war. @washingtonpost tried to point out the hypocrisy of a president who had said he would prevent a war.