Hello Andrew. This is Matthew Thomas. Haven’t commented in a while - had a health scare but all is well now.
I enjoyed your column as always. I wish I could be as concise as you are in articulating my thoughts - I’m certainly no writer - but here goes.
This is not satire.
Absolutely you’re right the media was happy to both debase and promote Trump solely for his ratings value. CNN, MSNBC, FOX etc… made a ton of money off him and he in turn, received loads of money from them in the way of free publicity. The idiom ‘‘there is no bad publicity,” certainly applies.
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the office…Trump actually got elected. Again, Trump proved to be a ratings bonanza. But then in 2019 Trump lost and without him to drive their news cycles, the networks ratings and earnings fell off a cliff.
But luckily for the networks, Trump is still hated intensely by his political opponents and hating him still pays big dividends for both them and the media. For example, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and NY Attorney General Latricia James ran their campaigns on the promise to indict Trump. They won. Bigly. Of course they ran in heavily Democrat districts but they convinced voters they hated Trump more than the other guy.
Trump remains the elephant in the Democrats’ brain. They are unable to get over their loss to him. It’s no secret that the Democrat elite wants to kill him politically by any means necessary, destroy his family and, as Rome did to Carthage, sow his fields with salt. Carthago Delenda Est. So, the indictment of President Trump was predictable.
That a political party that controls the levers of power has indicted a former opposition president on spurious legal grounds and especially now that he’s the front runner in a new campaign for office, is terribly and horribly dangerous to our country. The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele is correct when he recently tweeted, “Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted.
But just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate.
The United States ability to use “democracy” as foreign policy is gone.”
Trump, love him or hate him, won and was the president of OUR country. Politics is just another name for war without violence. Once, most all of us agreed with the axiom “you may have beaten us this time, but we’ll get you next time.”
When the personal is made political and the political made criminal, we’ve got a whole new paradigm to deal with. If and when the Democrats do this, the Republicans will reciprocate - and it’s already long since started.
The people pushing ‘the political is criminal’ both right and left, better be damn careful just exactly what it is they’re hoping to accomplish and exactly what their end game is. The media better wake up to the hostility they inflame for ratings and money.
We the people need to understand that Trump is not the reason, he’s just a symptom of our corrupted, power mad, win at all cost politics.
Democrats may believe they want to end six years of failure in getting Trump and what all he stands for and by extension, all those who support him. Trump understands this and uses it to further inflame when he openly states to his followers, “they’re not after me, they’re after you.” Democrats assumed that all they needed was character assassination to bring him down. Polls that show majorities believe that he is guilty of something as proof that he did something. Maybe it does, but throwing everything believed criminal at the wall to see what sticks has left a very bad odor that we are all forced to smell.
Republicans have made note of what the Democrats are attempting with the Trump indictment and have made their own calculations. Speaker McCarthy is laying the groundwork for the prosecution of the present Democrat administration. Committee chairman are already holding hearings to put on record what they think they know are indictable offenses of Biden, the Biden Administration AND Biden family. Gone are the days of leave my children out of it.
James Comer leads the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family. According to Comer, everyone in Washington knew for decades that Biden was on the take - note how similar this is to Democrats’ and the intelligence agencies specious claim that people in the know knew that Trump was a Russian spy?
On March 16, Comer announced, “Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability issued a memorandum revealing new evidence resulting from the investigation into the Biden family’s influence peddling and business schemes. Subpoenaed financial records show that from 2015 to 2017, Biden family members – Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden, and an unknown Biden — and their companies collectively received $1.3 million in payments from accounts related to Rob Walker, a Biden family associate … it appears that the Biden family… received the money obtained from…China… ”
There it is, spurious indictable offenses. And the Trump voters say “$1.3 million? They sold us out to Red China for a lousy million and a half? Hang the bastards.”
All this prosecutorial stuff is just the steak that sizzles. It’s toxic at best and exceedingly dangerous to all of us.
What should perhaps, concern us most of all, however, is that the government paid Twitter and leaned on Facebook and others to censor Trump supporters and the Hunter Biden laptop revelations just ahead of the 2020 election. That is fascism — the marriage of government and corporations. For if they censor one, they censor all.
That abuse alone should scare the hell out of us all and add one more reason to work together, respect one another, argue and debate our ideas and visions and at the end of an election cycle simply nod and say “you may have beaten us this time, but just wait until next time.” Otherwise, politics end and we’re left only with violence. I pray God these fools stop digging the hole that will eventually bury us all.
Sorry to hear about your health scare, Matthew. It’s good to know you’re feeling better.
You’ve really said a lot here. And I’m glad to have your contribution as always.
Satire is the use of irony, humor, and/or exaggeration in order to comment on contemporary events. For example, “stare decisis” as a legal term is not something that gets decided by a single act by a single person like Gerald Ford. It grows out of a series of judicial decisions that give legitimacy to a legal position. It is ludicrous to think the Nixon pardon fulfills that requirement. However, stare decisis did apply to Roe v. Wade, and the Supreme Court ignored it. How ironic. Ergo, satirical. Though sadly, not funny.
I don’t agree with your perspective on several debatable issues you’ve raised, but I welcome and respect them. Perhaps I can address them in another post sometime.
What’s clear to me is that we Americans no longer have an established set of objective facts upon which to base our decisions. Kellyanne Conway was pilloried for her “alternative facts” comments back in the day, partly because she made up stuff to prove her points. But she was right in the sense that the facts presented to consumers of Sinclair-owned media outlets and Fox News, for instance, may not be the same as those seen on PBS or mainstream media.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that either side is lying. It just means that our public discourse would benefit from balanced reporting that presents all facts at the same time without spin. And I don’t think that’s happening right now.
It takes so much time and effort to research a single smoking-gun issue like Hunter Biden’s laptop, for instance, in order to separate fact from fiction that most people don’t even bother. What we’re left with is a skewed perspective on everything. Not good. Not good at all.
Thanks again for your contribution to this discussion. Here’s to your continued good health.
Early days indicate this indictment is helping Trump (fundraising and polls) but there’s a long way to go before we’ll know how it all plays out. The other looming legal issues might do more harm to him. Great satire - you summed up what the Trump faithful are saying to a tee.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. After Trump’s arraignment in NYC, I listened to part of his rally that night and read a number of social media feeds from his supporters. And I made a sincere effort to understand where they’re coming from. I believe that’s a healthy thing to do in any situation.
What I mostly noticed was that Trump has succeeded in branding his legal problems as a political persecution. And as I drafted this post, I could see why that has worked with his target audience.
Perception is reality, as I pointed out above. Once a perception is created, it’s really difficult to uncreate it. For example, two years of investigations into Hillary Clinton, not counting Whitewater, found nothing to prosecute, and people still believe she’s crooked.
Knowing that his legal woes were mounting, Trump was clever to announce his candidacy earlier than usual. His genius for branding has allowed him to frame apparent criminal activity as nothing compared to what his opponents are doing to him. If he gets away with this, he will have proven that he really is above the law.
I always learn something when I read your articles. Thank you again!
Thanks to you too. Much appreciated!
Hello Andrew. This is Matthew Thomas. Haven’t commented in a while - had a health scare but all is well now.
I enjoyed your column as always. I wish I could be as concise as you are in articulating my thoughts - I’m certainly no writer - but here goes.
This is not satire.
Absolutely you’re right the media was happy to both debase and promote Trump solely for his ratings value. CNN, MSNBC, FOX etc… made a ton of money off him and he in turn, received loads of money from them in the way of free publicity. The idiom ‘‘there is no bad publicity,” certainly applies.
Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the office…Trump actually got elected. Again, Trump proved to be a ratings bonanza. But then in 2019 Trump lost and without him to drive their news cycles, the networks ratings and earnings fell off a cliff.
But luckily for the networks, Trump is still hated intensely by his political opponents and hating him still pays big dividends for both them and the media. For example, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and NY Attorney General Latricia James ran their campaigns on the promise to indict Trump. They won. Bigly. Of course they ran in heavily Democrat districts but they convinced voters they hated Trump more than the other guy.
Trump remains the elephant in the Democrats’ brain. They are unable to get over their loss to him. It’s no secret that the Democrat elite wants to kill him politically by any means necessary, destroy his family and, as Rome did to Carthage, sow his fields with salt. Carthago Delenda Est. So, the indictment of President Trump was predictable.
That a political party that controls the levers of power has indicted a former opposition president on spurious legal grounds and especially now that he’s the front runner in a new campaign for office, is terribly and horribly dangerous to our country. The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele is correct when he recently tweeted, “Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted.
But just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate.
The United States ability to use “democracy” as foreign policy is gone.”
Trump, love him or hate him, won and was the president of OUR country. Politics is just another name for war without violence. Once, most all of us agreed with the axiom “you may have beaten us this time, but we’ll get you next time.”
When the personal is made political and the political made criminal, we’ve got a whole new paradigm to deal with. If and when the Democrats do this, the Republicans will reciprocate - and it’s already long since started.
The people pushing ‘the political is criminal’ both right and left, better be damn careful just exactly what it is they’re hoping to accomplish and exactly what their end game is. The media better wake up to the hostility they inflame for ratings and money.
We the people need to understand that Trump is not the reason, he’s just a symptom of our corrupted, power mad, win at all cost politics.
Democrats may believe they want to end six years of failure in getting Trump and what all he stands for and by extension, all those who support him. Trump understands this and uses it to further inflame when he openly states to his followers, “they’re not after me, they’re after you.” Democrats assumed that all they needed was character assassination to bring him down. Polls that show majorities believe that he is guilty of something as proof that he did something. Maybe it does, but throwing everything believed criminal at the wall to see what sticks has left a very bad odor that we are all forced to smell.
Republicans have made note of what the Democrats are attempting with the Trump indictment and have made their own calculations. Speaker McCarthy is laying the groundwork for the prosecution of the present Democrat administration. Committee chairman are already holding hearings to put on record what they think they know are indictable offenses of Biden, the Biden Administration AND Biden family. Gone are the days of leave my children out of it.
James Comer leads the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family. According to Comer, everyone in Washington knew for decades that Biden was on the take - note how similar this is to Democrats’ and the intelligence agencies specious claim that people in the know knew that Trump was a Russian spy?
On March 16, Comer announced, “Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability issued a memorandum revealing new evidence resulting from the investigation into the Biden family’s influence peddling and business schemes. Subpoenaed financial records show that from 2015 to 2017, Biden family members – Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden, and an unknown Biden — and their companies collectively received $1.3 million in payments from accounts related to Rob Walker, a Biden family associate … it appears that the Biden family… received the money obtained from…China… ”
There it is, spurious indictable offenses. And the Trump voters say “$1.3 million? They sold us out to Red China for a lousy million and a half? Hang the bastards.”
All this prosecutorial stuff is just the steak that sizzles. It’s toxic at best and exceedingly dangerous to all of us.
What should perhaps, concern us most of all, however, is that the government paid Twitter and leaned on Facebook and others to censor Trump supporters and the Hunter Biden laptop revelations just ahead of the 2020 election. That is fascism — the marriage of government and corporations. For if they censor one, they censor all.
That abuse alone should scare the hell out of us all and add one more reason to work together, respect one another, argue and debate our ideas and visions and at the end of an election cycle simply nod and say “you may have beaten us this time, but just wait until next time.” Otherwise, politics end and we’re left only with violence. I pray God these fools stop digging the hole that will eventually bury us all.
Sorry to hear about your health scare, Matthew. It’s good to know you’re feeling better.
You’ve really said a lot here. And I’m glad to have your contribution as always.
Satire is the use of irony, humor, and/or exaggeration in order to comment on contemporary events. For example, “stare decisis” as a legal term is not something that gets decided by a single act by a single person like Gerald Ford. It grows out of a series of judicial decisions that give legitimacy to a legal position. It is ludicrous to think the Nixon pardon fulfills that requirement. However, stare decisis did apply to Roe v. Wade, and the Supreme Court ignored it. How ironic. Ergo, satirical. Though sadly, not funny.
I don’t agree with your perspective on several debatable issues you’ve raised, but I welcome and respect them. Perhaps I can address them in another post sometime.
What’s clear to me is that we Americans no longer have an established set of objective facts upon which to base our decisions. Kellyanne Conway was pilloried for her “alternative facts” comments back in the day, partly because she made up stuff to prove her points. But she was right in the sense that the facts presented to consumers of Sinclair-owned media outlets and Fox News, for instance, may not be the same as those seen on PBS or mainstream media.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that either side is lying. It just means that our public discourse would benefit from balanced reporting that presents all facts at the same time without spin. And I don’t think that’s happening right now.
It takes so much time and effort to research a single smoking-gun issue like Hunter Biden’s laptop, for instance, in order to separate fact from fiction that most people don’t even bother. What we’re left with is a skewed perspective on everything. Not good. Not good at all.
Thanks again for your contribution to this discussion. Here’s to your continued good health.
Early days indicate this indictment is helping Trump (fundraising and polls) but there’s a long way to go before we’ll know how it all plays out. The other looming legal issues might do more harm to him. Great satire - you summed up what the Trump faithful are saying to a tee.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. After Trump’s arraignment in NYC, I listened to part of his rally that night and read a number of social media feeds from his supporters. And I made a sincere effort to understand where they’re coming from. I believe that’s a healthy thing to do in any situation.
What I mostly noticed was that Trump has succeeded in branding his legal problems as a political persecution. And as I drafted this post, I could see why that has worked with his target audience.
Perception is reality, as I pointed out above. Once a perception is created, it’s really difficult to uncreate it. For example, two years of investigations into Hillary Clinton, not counting Whitewater, found nothing to prosecute, and people still believe she’s crooked.
Knowing that his legal woes were mounting, Trump was clever to announce his candidacy earlier than usual. His genius for branding has allowed him to frame apparent criminal activity as nothing compared to what his opponents are doing to him. If he gets away with this, he will have proven that he really is above the law.
Thanks again for weighing in.
Jeez, I hope this is satire.
Yes sir! It is. Thanks for reading.