Trump Sista Souljahs the NABJ

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by Ishmael Reed

 August 2, 2024

“Trump is arguably the first bona fide media-created presidential nominee. Although he subsequently tapped a political nerve, journalists fueled his launch.” This was the conclusion of The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, a Harvard Kennedy School research center that wrote about the 2016 contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

The media are fueling his candidacy again. Time’s columnist Gail Collins gave the reason when she said, “He’s fun to watch,” which means he attracts eyeballs, the reason that corporate T.V. exists. To make money. He is the star of the ongoing movie The Donald Trump Story, a political biopic. President Biden is merely a cast member and is scrutinized more than Trump. On July 12, the day after Biden gave an hour-long wonkish assessment of foreign policy, reporters seized upon his mixing up some names. None mentioned that seventy-eight-year-old Donald Trump, on more than one occasion, has said he’s running against former president Obama. Why this double standard? Timothy Snyder suggests that some pundits and reporters fear Trump and his Red Caps.

In his article “Fascism and Fear The Moment, The Media, The Election,” Timothy Snyder noted that the media, after President Biden’s inept debate performance, were in a frenzy in their calls for Biden to step aside, even harassing Biden’s Black press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. To give Trump, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, the same treatment would invite retaliation from some of Trump’s deranged followers were Trump to be elected. Snyder concludes that the chattering classes are scared of Trump. He writes:

Trump is on the record regarding reports as enemies of the people. What should I make — a journalist might ask — of Trump’s talk of arresting journalists? When not confronted, such questions become self-realizing fears.

That’s the subtle version. Meanwhile, those higher up in corporations might like the ratings Trump brings or like Trump himself. And so it is easiest to keep things personal — give Trump time on the self-deluding logic that he will discredit himself and focus on Biden’s age rather than his achievements. For reporters it can feel like the work is being done when only Biden is at the receiving end of criticism — whereas, in fact, the ground has been shifted by fascism or by the inability to confront it.

Is this why Jake Tapper and Dana Bash were timid when asking questions of Trump during the first CNN debate? Because they didn’t want some deranged Red Cap to enter their homes armed with a hammer or follow their children to school? Was it because, as a result of a Trump supporter billionaire John Malone owning a piece of CNN, they didn’t want to offend the boss?If an interviewer from the B.B.C. or Al Jazeera had done the questioning, Trump would have lost the first debate because they wouldn’t have permitted him to wiggle out of his 35 lies.

So on Wed. The NABJ invited Trump to submit to questioning, like inviting the Wolf into the chicken coop. His interviewers, Rachel Scott from ABC, Kadia Goba, and Harris Faulkner of Fox News, allowed the convicted felon to promote the usual lies with little pushback. A Fox journalist, Harris Faulkner, tossed him some comfort questions. This is a woman who is ok with a rapist referring to the Vice President as “garbage,” ” a bum,” and “evil?”

For the media, the headline from the interview came when Trump doubted the Vice President’s Blackness. She’s Black because she belongs to a Black sorority, the journalists answered. This was picked up by journalists for the rest of the afternoon, including Sara Sidner and Kadia Goba, one of those who had interviewed Trump at the NABJ. Why didn’t one of those journalists mention that the Vice President has a Black father? Donald J. Harris.

“Donald Jasper Harris, OM (born August 23, 1938) is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics. He is the father of Kamala Harris, vice president of the United States, and of Maya Harris, lawyer and political commentator.”

On August 1st, The New York Times placed Trump’s question about the Vice President’s racial identity on the front page. They assigned three reporters to the story: Jonathan Weisman, Maya King, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs. However, like the three who interviewed Trump at the NABJ convention, the Vice President’s Black father wasn’t mentioned. Three more reporters, Lisa Lerer, joined Maya King and Michael D. Shear in an “analysis” of Trump’s inaccurate portrayal of the Vice president’s heritage. Five writers and none bothered to Google information about the Vice President’s parents? Esau McCaulley,a Times contributing opinion editor, is also ignorant of the Vice President’s Black heritage. He called the marriage between an Indian woman and a Jamaican man  “interracial.” During my study of Hindi and Indian culture for my play “The Conductor,” I found that the British called Indians “niggers’; so do white Americans, which is how Trump’s Nazi Red Caps refer to JD Nance’s Indian wife. With her dark skin, Kamala’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, would be considered a Dalit, or an untouchable in India and discriminated against.

This is why Black readers lack confidence in the Times coverage of Black issues. The editorial page, dominated by good old boys almost daily, led by Bret Stephens, who has a Compulsive Obsessive Disorder about Blacks, and Ross Douthat, are permitted to take ignorant shots at Blacks and the Vice President without Black writers or intellectuals allowed to respond. They are bullies. Stephens believes that Black Lives Matter is more of a threat to Jews than Donald Trump, who the ADL has condemned for his anti-Semitism; at one point, Stephens said that the Democrats should apologize to Trump. He was allowed to write a bizarre blast at Woke, the latest euphemism for Black culture, without being required to define Woke.

 On MSNBC, August 1st, another panel about Trump’s ignorance of the Vice President’s heritage.  failed to mention the Vice President’s Black father. This is the third opportunity missed by Kadia Goba. First on the NABJ interview, July 31, on CNN, and August 1st  on MSNBC.The line continues to be that she’s Black because she went to a Black school. If Trump is running with this distortion, it’s the journalists’ fault. The Times, like the NABJ interviewers, provided Trump with a talking point that he can feed to his unhinged Red Caps. Joy Reid was right when she said the NABJ “got played.”Trump borrowed the Clinton Sistah Souljah strategy. Clinton criticized the rapper’s racism when he embarrassed Jesse Jackson at Jackson’s Rainbow Convention. Clinton wanted to show whites how tough he could be with Blacks. So did Trump.

Ishmael Reed’s latest play The Shine Challenge 2024 will have it’s premier in New York from Jan 30-Feb.16

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