The gloves are off (if they were ever on) when it comes to some of the liberal media and 2016 presidential republican contender Donald Trump. On July 27 the Daily Beast served up what they hoped would be a knock-out blow to the high poll numbers The Donald’s passionate campaign keeps producing. And their punch of choice came in the form of reporting about spousal rape allegations made by Ivana Trump during her divorce deposition in the 90s, when she and the father of her three children were at war. In another effort by a financial columnist, who appears to have his own axe to grind, the massive wealth of the frontrunner for the presidency became a springboard for advocating all kinds of unscrupulous financial wheelings and dealings–all in the name of “getting rich” like Donald Trump.
The problem with the coverage from both media sources, however, is that there is an obvious bias in the reporting of one, as well as a total disregard for the woman mentioned in the piece (who chose not to participate in any way with the story, by the way)–and an obvious artsy effort in the other to come across as clever, when in actuality the piece comes off as irresponsible journalism, as it seems to encourage the masses to do things that are disreputable at best, criminal at worst, and a sure way to damage their financial reputation all around. Thus, we have someone dredging up a decades-old divorce deposition for the sole purpose of slurring the reputation of a man never accused of–or charged with–any type of sexual assault solely because he dared to point out the criminal acts of illegal immigrants in America; a fact even substantiated by federal law enforcement statistics, no less.
In the Brett Arends target piece we are told that “Donald Trump is rich. Really, really rich. And you’re not”. And there is nothing wrong with the writer pointing that out, of course. But he also points out how he thinks you can even the odds and accumulate wealth of your own–by cheating others. And that’s not kosher, and it certainly does not add anything significant to a presidential campaign discussion of any type of serious import. Arends, instead, focuses on making sure you know that the Donald uses “other people’s money” in order to acquire his own business success and wealth. But the truth is that any business of any significance has had to borrow money from banks or find deep-pocket investors to go along with them in their big dream pursuits. And some of them, like Donald Trump, have lost their money and that of others in the pursuit of some of these ventures. But does the writer of the piece point that out? No. Here’s what Arends says instead:
Going to college? Don’t be a sucker and take out a student loan. Thanks to the U.S. laws, those student loans will haunt you for years. Instead, put it on a credit card–then file for bankruptcy,” Arends suggests. “Credit card debt is wiped out in bankruptcy,’ he says, and ‘so long as the banks can’t actually prove outright fraud–and they rarely can–you can walk away free and clear.”
This is not advice anyone should take seriously (but some might), and while Arends is obviously trying to be sarcastic about ways in which you can be like “The Donald,” he is clearly missing the mark, even in the financial sense, as one place you are not likely to find the billionaire is doing time for attempting to defraud a credit card company or the bankruptcy court.
The news that the average American should focus on, therefore, during the 2016 Presidential Election is what the candidates says themselves, and whether their words can be backed up factually, since most of the media reporting is veering off into areas that have nothing to do with whether or not Donald Trump (or anyone else) would make a good president or not based upon the needs of the country. In fact, some media outlets, like the Huffington Post, are refusing to even provide their readers with coverage of all the candidates, specifically Mr. Trump. They have deemed him “entertainment” even though he is a legitimate presidential candidate.
Since when have media outlets refused to cover a story or news as big as the presidential campaign and the men and women in it? Even as biased and irrelevant as the story about Ivana Trump’s divorce deposition statements from the 90s is, at least the Daily Beast is continuing to report on one of the campaign candidates seeking the Oval Office as his next base of operations. But if the Huffington Post was going to lean too far to the left in their coverage, too, then who really needs more of that? Not Donald Trump, of course.
