By George Barron
The traditional news media is doing their best to defuse President Trump’s statement to the country tonight (Tuesday, Jan 11 2019) on the immigration problem. They have a two-fold problem.
First, since Trump has continually pointed out that the news media is biased – twisting his words, omitting fact, interpreting his sarcasm literally and even fabricating stories that show him in a negative way – they could hardly refuse to broadcast his address for fear of adding credence to his criticism of their reporting of him.
But, by broadcasting Trump’s address, they run the risk of the American people discovering that the press has been withholding the truth about the illegal immigration problem from them. And President Trump can be very persuasive.
The big three television networks did debate whether or not to broadcast the speech. In the end, they decided that it would be better to go ahead because maybe Trump would blow it and not make his case. They can only hope. As an insurance policy they will also broadcast a Democrat response, even though the immigration issue shouldn’t be partisan.
If President Trump is successful tonight, millions more Americans will understand that that illegal immigration is one of the biggest problems facing our nation. They will understand how much it is costing communities and the nation, the tragedies of drug smuggling and human trafficking and the pressure put upon our law enforcement agencies.
For a number of us watching tonight, this won’t be news. For others it will be enlightening. That’s because the traditional news media doesn’t give the American people the facts about the crises on the border. Hard working, busy Americans watching a few minutes of broadcast T.V. news only see crying babies and desperate mothers trying to cross the border. And Trump, always the bad guy of course, won’t let them in.
So the news media will be running preemptive fake news strikes today. They will be giving any democrat air time that will call Trump a liar and say that that he must be fact checked. That’s code for, ‘don’t believe a word he says.’ CNN has already announced that they will be doing live fact checking and bringing in the usual parade of Democrats and Trump haters to discredit the speech.
They have no choice but to run as much propaganda against President Trump as possible. And they will do everything they can to intimidate anyone that dares agree with him.
Already the American people have come to distrust the press. If the President makes a persuasive argument for a southern border wall tonight, the news media will be taken down another notch or two. They will be exposed as liars by having suppressed important news that the American people need to know about.