BOYCOTT
felons Thursday evening speech to the nation
Dont tune in tune out
from Marc Elias’ DEMOCRACY DOCKET
Donald Trump is a stone-cold liar. He
lies about his height, his wealth and his golf game. He lies about his
accomplishments and his failures. He lies about everything, large and small,
important and insignificant.
There is nothing, however, that Donald
Trump lies about more than elections — particularly, the 2020 election. There
is a reason his statements about the 2020 election were dubbed the Big Lie.
In his second term, Trump has
transformed the executive branch into a factory for creating, disseminating and
enforcing these lies. His Cabinet is filled with election deniers who parrot
his falsehoods. He insists that every nominee — whether to an agency post or a
federal judgeship — offer an answer about the result of the 2020 election that
reinforces the lie.
The result, as the Soviet dissident
Alexander Solzhenitsyn said of the Soviet Union, is that “In our country the
lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.”
The difference between the former Soviet
Union and the United States today is that we have the constitutional right to
speak freely and criticize our government. Our media is protected from
government censorship by a robust First Amendment.
But these rights are only as strong as
we are willing to exercise them. Sadly, right now, too few people in positions
of power are willing to loudly criticize Trump for his lies. Even worse, the
once-proud legacy media has proven itself too timid to speak clearly about
Trump and his lies.
But on Thursday night, the media and its
powerful backers have a chance to partially redeem themselves. That is because
Donald Trump has announced a prime-time speech to the nation. According to
reports, he will use this time to once again lie about elections.
Specifically, he is reportedly set to
announce that he has new intelligence reports supporting his lies about the
2020 election. Some suggest he may single out Georgia, while others suggest he
will try to implicate multiple states' election results.
What is important to keep in mind is
that it will all be lies.
To be clear, everyone in the legacy
media knows Trump's history and knows that he will spread dangerous lies on
Thursday night. They also know that they have a choice about whether to cover
the speech in whole, in part or not at all. Most importantly, they know the
danger and the stakes.
In 2014, the Obama White House sounded
out the networks about carrying a prime-time address on immigration and was
told no. In 2022, the networks refused prime-time coverage of a speech Joe
Biden delivered on democracy.
The question we must all put to these
same networks today is this: Do they plan to provide valuable free airtime to a
president who is going to systematically undermine democracy by lying about
elections?
Sadly, I suspect we know the answer. The
largest media outlets have already proved unwilling to stand up to Trump. Their
corporate overlords and outside business interests drive them to curry favor
with Trump rather than hold him to account.
Some of them will no doubt cloak their
decision to cover the address as important for the public to hear. While I
disagree, I offer them a compromise solution...
0941, Tuesday,
14 7. 26
Neil Young Rockin’ in the Free World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvxxdZpMFHg
Jon Stewart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH-yAy8_yB4
