Stephen Colbert criticized the media for treating Trump’s crimes as a run-of-the-mill political story that is part of the horserace coverage of the election.
Colbert said:
Those three are only today and tomorrow. He is also facing the January 6 trial in Washington D.C., the classified documents case in Florida, Colorado, which seeks to exclude him from the insurrection ballot, and his appeal of the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, in which a jury has already found that Trump committed sexual assault. Yet people want to hire this maniac as president.
In light of all this, I’d like to make a quick public service announcement: this is [f-ed] on. I know we have become numb. And it’s not normal. No other presidential candidate has faced more courts. And I would like to point out that in all seven of his cases no one doubts that he did these things. We are simply sitting patiently waiting to find out if the wheels of justice will move fast enough to cause any consequences.
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And the media talks about it like any other political story: it’s all a horse race. But in this horse race, one of the horses is old, while the other is old, has hoof disease in his mouth and keeps quoting Hitler the horse!
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Stephen Colbert was right. One reason election coverage is so frustrating is that the media continues to downplay or ignore Trump’s criminal trials as part of the campaign. It’s as if the press decided that criminal trials are just another aspect of elections.
When they are the opposite of normal. Never before in the United States has a former president planned a return to the White House while facing 91 criminal charges. None of this is normal and should not be considered normal.
The press is doing a disservice to democracy and the nation. Trump’s alleged crimes are not business as usual, and the press needs to stop treating Trump as if he were any other candidate.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a member of the White House press pool and a congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a bachelor’s degree in political science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and professional memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Political Science Association