Sorry Phil, but I don't need the media to interview more people who voted against their own economic interests to know they're living in a right wing bubble.
June 25, 2017

Sorry, Phil Donahue, but I don't need the media to interview more people who voted against their own economic interests to know they're living in a right wing bubble created by Fox "News," right wing hate talk and the endless string of lies being pumped into their social media feeds, courtesy of Vladimir Putin and Breitbart.

The BBC went out and talked to Trump voters in Iowa this week, but did we really need for them to do this to find out that these voters have been brainwashed into believing whatever garbage is spewed daily on right wing blogs and Fox?

The other thing that amazed me about this interview is that it aired right after Brian Stelter's segment on how Fox & Friends is basically a "daily infomercial" for Trump, but there was no mention of how that propaganda is skewing their view of the world and of politics. Nor was the other big elephant in the room mentioned during the Reliable Sources segment with Donahue: racism.

Transcript via CNN:

STELTER: But do you think he would come on your show? Right now, he's only doing friendly interviews with FOX.

DONAHUE: Well, probably not.

But I'm saying, I have to acknowledge that this is the dilemma that people in media face. But, please, talk to the people out there. Find out why this happened. There isn't enough attention given to that, in my opinion.

STELTER: Even six or seven months after Election Day?

DONAHUE: Well, we finally realized that white working-class, middle- class people were angry, and angry enough to go kaboom and the kaboom manifested itself in the election of Donald trump. This is what...

STELTER: Do you feel like the country is ever going to get over the election? The president was tweeting about it again this morning about Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

Are we stuck?

DONAHUE: This is a hell of a story. I mean, it's a revolution. It's revolution-lite. They're going to be talking about it for -- yes, there's no bodies in the street and we're not shooting each other yet.

But imagine. Compare him, compare Trump to Eisenhower, I mean, for example. This is my president, who I grew up with in the '40s and the '50s. This is bewildering. And it shouldn't be.

If the press got out of Washington, stopped worshipping power, go, like so many people, Amy Goodman and other people are doing, go to where the silence is, you're going to get more truth the lower you go.

All you see on the Sunday shows are secretaries of this and that and powerful people. Let's talk to the real people. Find out what they think. Get out of Washington. See what's going on in Iowa and the Midwest. It's going to make us more informed, and it's going to alert us to this huge event that has happened here.

Suddenly, suddenly, you have op-ed people, they can't find enough adjectives to express their disgust for this man. And I wish they would commit that much energy to figuring out who are the people that made this happen.

And I think they're going to discover, it's not in the stars. It's in ourselves. We got Donald Trump because we let it happen. We didn't vote. We were apathetic and we looked up and think now, holy cow, we got a -- we got a -- I don't want to say it.

We got a P-U-S-S-Y grabber for president, and we are appalled. We can't figure this out. And one of the reasons we did -- we can't figure it out is because elite media, as he would call it, failed us.

The media has failed us alright, but not because they're not talking to enough Trump voters.

They fail us every time they allow lies to go unchecked.

They fail us every time they play the "both sides!" false equivalence game and pretend that both parties are equally bad when it comes to their concern for their constituents and their well being.

They fail us when they focus on stories about process, or infighting, or posturing by politicians and don't paint a clear picture for the public as to what their policy decisions will actually mean for people and their day to day lives.

I don't need to hear from more people who've uncritically sucked up all sorts of propaganda to figure out why these voters are angry. It's already very clear what they're upset about and who intends to keep them riled up.

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