Shortly after President Donald Trump accused Barack Obama of treason – an epithet that has been thrown at Trump practically every day – Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said: “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”
Distraction from what?
Rodenbush didn’t have to say, because the media have been busy filling in that blank.
“Trump tries to distract from Epstein by casually accusing Obama of treason,” is how MSNBC put it.
CNN’s headline blared that “Trump’s longtime rage at Obama roars back amid Epstein furor.”
“Critics say Trump is trying to distract from Epstein by talking about everything but that,” is how ABC News put it.
Let’s see if we understand this.
We’ve just learned that hundreds of pages of declassified documents appear to show that Barack Obama orchestrated a phony Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) report, issued just before Trump first took office in 2017, that accused Vladimir Putin of ordering an “influence campaign” to “denigrate” Clinton and “help” Trump win the 2016 election, in a apparent attempt to sabotage Trump’s presidency.
As RealClearPolitics’ Paul Sperry reported last week:
‘Obama ordered the ICA to set Trump up and knock him off balance before he could even get started,’ said the senior official, who asked to remain anonymous. ‘This was an influence operation far more consequential than anything [Russian President Vladimir] Putin cooked up. Obama and Hillary [Clinton] schemed the op, and the CIA and FBI ran it.’
But to Trump haters in the press, this is just a “distraction” from the really important issue: Namely, unverified rumors and wild speculation about Trump’s dealings with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison six years ago.
Isn’t that it more likely that the media’s Epstein fixation is meant to distract the public from the startling Obama news? Or Trump’s many successes in his first six months? And isn’t this just another attempt to sabotage his presidency as his term is getting started? This Washington Post headline says it all: “Trump fumes as Epstein scandal dominates headlines, overshadows agenda.”
Well, that got us wondering what constitutes a “distraction” in the eyes of the media.
Back when Joe Biden was in the White House and Republicans were launching an impeachment investigation, the press called that “a political distraction from other priorities.”
What priorities? The press was happy to parrot Biden’s line that “I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got to deal with issues that affect the American people every single solitary day.”
We saw the same thing during the Obama and Clinton administrations, where any whiff of a scandal was dismissed by the press as a “distraction” from the important work of running the country. And whenever Ronald Reagan, or a Bush, or Trump wanted to talk about real issues, the press treated that as an attempt to divert attention to whatever scandal they were playing up.
The Daily Beast provides yet another example of how this works, with its headline over the weekend that “Trump Floats Prosecuting Oprah as Latest Epstein Distraction Tactic.”
So, we decided to write down the official media definition of “distraction.”
Distraction (n.):
- Events or scandals that threaten the interests of a Democrat
- Anything that doesn’t fit the media’s anti-Republican narrative
We hope this clears things up.
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day – without fear or favor.
Original article link
Federalist CEO: New Declassified Docs Reveal The Dangers Of Anti-Trump ‘Coup’
Federalist CEO and co-founder Sean Davis defended last week’s revelations about the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), calling them some of the most significant disclosures yet in the long-running investigation into the Trump-Russia narrative.
“There are 5–10 people who have been deeply involved in reporting on the Russia collusion hoax from the beginning,” Davis wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “I am one of them, and so is [Federalist editor] Mollie Hemingway.”
Davis strongly rejected claims that the newly declassified ICA-related documents are “old news,” describing such characterizations as either ignorant or deliberately deceptive.
“Claiming that the ICA revelations are ‘nothing new’... suggests a far more nefarious intent,” he said, arguing that the latest documents expose the scale of the “corrupt coup” against President Donald Trump.
He also pointed to the FBI’s 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago, claiming that the operation targeted the very documents now being dismissed. Davis accused mainstream media figures of pushing false narratives and never seriously investigating the Russia probe.
TIPP Takes
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