Cal Thomas: The White House “coalition media”

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, August 1st, 2024. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Commentator Cal Thomas now, on the mainstream media’s relationship with presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: In the film “Men in Black,” a pen-like device causes people to forget everything they have seen and heard. Actor Will Smith calls it a “flashy thing.”

It appears the media and Democrats are metaphorically using a similar device, hoping voters will forget everything Vice President Kamala Harris has said and done in the past – even the recent past – and accept that what she is saying today are her true beliefs, even when they contradict previous statements and supposed “convictions.”

Not that the media need any help in following their largely leftist biases, which have usually favored Democrats and progressives, but their already low approval numbers won’t be helped by this story from semafor.com: “(Harris) has invited a parade of prominent television anchors and media executives to dine with her at the Naval Observatory, given personal tours of her garden to journalists from diverse backgrounds, and shaped trips to do media appearances with the outlets serving Democratic-leaning groups the White House refers to as ‘coalition media.”

Coalition media? Sounds Orwellian, as in “group think.”

There is so much the media and Harris’ fellow Democrats want to forget she said and did that the flashy thing might need to be constantly re-charged.

Just a few of many examples: During the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, Harris promoted a bail fund that freed men convicted of murder and sexual assault. While on bail some committed additional crimes. Sounds like what happened to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis when Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who had been sentenced to life without parole, received a weekend furlough and used it to travel out of state, rape a woman, and bind and gag her fiancé. A TV ad about Horton undermined Dukakis’ 1988 presidential campaign, helping George H.W. Bush to win. Could similar stories come back to haunt the current vice president? Not with the flashy thing.

As a senator, Harris supported what a recent Wall Street Journal editorial called “the spending blowouts that cause inflation.”

Flashy thing.

The Wall Street Journal continues: “As California Attorney General (she launched) an investigation into Exxon Mobil over its carbon omissions … and in 2019 she endorsed a nationwide ban on oil and gas fracking.” That’s a position she has now reversed because she needs those Pennsylvania electoral votes. Flashy.

As a self-styled California “progressive” from San Francisco, perhaps the most liberal city in America, Harris is apparently all-in on the Green New Deal, student loan forgiveness (which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional); tax increases, which President Biden favors as the Trump tax cuts are to expire next year; a guaranteed income for families making up to $100,000 a year; free college tuition for families making up to $100,000 a year; single-payer health care, which would mean turning our health care over to government which does so many things poorly; and Medicare for all. Flashy.

Let’s not forget that Harris once compared the KKK to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which, along with Border Patrol agents, have been impossibly overburdened by the Biden-Harris open border policy.

There’s much more about her opinions and record, making things more difficult to forget. But the flashy thing, also known as the major media, has the power to make it happen. Will voters make an effort to remember?

I’m Cal Thomas.

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