MSNBC: It Was All a Scam

I think MSNBC has jumped the shark.

MSNBC is tanking in the ratings, like most so-called "legacy media" outlets," at the expense of news sources online, some of which barely qualify as sources of news or anything else of value.  But the defections from MSNBC are quite telling.  The fallout from Jos Scarborough's and Mika Brzezinski's November 15 pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to lick Trump's boots is just the tip of the iceberg.

In case you hadn't noticed, MSNBC had been squarely behind Joe Biden's re-election campaign right up to the afternoon of June 27, 2024, before the President stumbled, fumbled and just plain flopped in his debate with Donald Trump that night.  Eager to separate themselves from the train wreck that was Biden's debate performance, MSNBC commentators - including not only Joe Scarborough but also folks like Jen Psaki, who worked for Biden as his press secretary - pleaded with the the President to abandon his bid for another term, certain that he was going to lose.  This was quite different from political pundits like Jonathan Alter and Steve Schmidt (both of whom, in full disclosure, have appeared on MSNBC in the past)  who had been saying long before June 27 that Biden should have stood down from a re-election bid much sooner and allowed a primary/caucus contest to determine his replacement.  You actually saw MSNBC hosts suddenly turn on Biden like a weather vane in a windstorm as if they had never had faith in Biden from the start.  

For the record, I had hoped Biden would decide not to run for re-election right after the 2022 midterms,  but when he went ahead, I trusted that he knew what he was doing - and I never believed that his facilities were rapidly failing and that he was being protected by a power-hungry coterie of advisers, as some pundits had suggested.  I was more disgusted at both pundits and top Democrats abandoning him without even giving him a chance to recover.  And many MSNBC commentators, in a first sign of something being rotten in Denmark, continuously obsessed over Biden's age without considering Trump's clearly obvious dementia.

And then came Kamala Harris.  I already mentioned in an earlier blog post last week how the reporting on the Harris campaign was propaganda, but I didn't know just how insidious the influence of Democratic insiders was until I started listening to podcasts with observations from people who know more about the inner workings of MSNBC than I do about how much in bed MSNBC bigwigs were with the Democratic National Committee and the consultant class that rips off Democratic candidates like Harris for telling them what they want to hear.  But maybe I should have figured it out myself; in spite of various danger warnings throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Democratic consultant Simon Rosenberg constantly appeared on MSNBC programs, as well as on his own YouTube channel, repeating the same two meaningless mantras over and over - "I'd rather be us than them."  "We're winning, but we haven't won yet."    

If some consultant has to keep repeating the same canned lines, it's likely more wishful thinking than thoughtful analysis.

The positive, optimistic reporting and commentary from MSNBC was clearly erroneous.  There's nothing wrong with being wrong, but, just as Biden went from being an asset to a liability in the eyes of MSNBC personalities on a Thursday night in June, appraisals of the Harris campaign went from faint praise to damnation on a Wednesday morning as MSNBC commentators who had been applauding the Democrats for running a wonderful campaign were suddenly picking them apart for a cluelessly inept one.  It was like someone excoriating Mrs. O'Leary for keeping her cow and her oil lantern in the barn together after the Chicago fire after having told her before the fire that keeping a cow in proximity to an oil lantern was perfectly safe.  

The coverage of the whole campaign was all wrong.  Although MSNBC did a good job in covering Trump's multiple deficiencies as a candidate, as a politician, as a businessman, and as a human being, it failed to do what was necessary in any election - inform the voters on the issues.  Some MSNBC rightfully decried the horse-race aspect of mainstream-media campaign coverage, but its own coverage was more about the stylistic differences between the two candidates than the pocketbook issues affecting the voters.   None of what the voters were concerned about showed up in what folks on MSNBC - especially guests who appear on numerous programs at different times - were talking about.  Voters not savvy about the issues wouldn't have been much enlightened about the issues, but they would have learned about girl dads and McDonald's photo ops.

And as if all of this weren't dizzying and head-spinning enough, we now learn that the Harris campaign donated $500,000 - in two separate transactions of $250,000 - to the Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network nonprofit civil rights group ahead of a friendly interview that Reverend Sharpton conducted with Harris . . . which, by all accounts, would have been a friendly interview even without those donations.

And in case you're wondering why Reverend Sharpton would compromise his journalistic integrity in such a blatant matter, you forget one thing - he's not a journalist.  He's a minister and a civil rights activist.  But he's not a journalist.  He's a public figure who happens to have a show on a cable news channel.

Right, I have to stop watching MSNBC.  In fact, already have.  Like so many others, I have tuned out as I have lost intertest in watching MSNBC for any genuine insight to the mess that is this post-election period.  I'm angry about how the channel's personalities helped push Biden out after having stood by him and I'm ticked off at how they gave Harris such favorable coverage only to turn on her once she lost.   I'm pissed at how their news coverage of the whole damn presidential campaign was in contrast to what was actually happening.  I can't be bothered with them anymore.

Time to go back to "BBC World News America."