Trumping the media

Deep state can no longer use tax money to pay off media

Thanks to DOGE, I learned the media’s coverage of Trump’s two presidencies was not based on talking points but on marching orders from the deep state. Musk traded in his Tesla for a DOGE Ram and we all found out the federal government gives millions to media outlets.

The old saw holds that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

That tune sure ain’t the Star-Spangled Banner.

The deep state sold Russiagate and all sorts of other crackpot conspiracy theories to the American people through state-paid media outlets such as NYT, AP and BBC. Politico alone received $8.2 million from the government last year through special subscriptions that begin at $10,000 each.

Last Tuesday, Trump stopped the payments and a few hours later, Politico failed to meet its payroll. The news outlet denied, denied and denied that there was a connection. It was an implausible denial. In politics, there are no such things as coincidences.

The Guardian tried to call the truth a conspiracy theory but failed to convince me:

The subscription payments to Politico were not the only ones under fire. Social media accounts also shared screenshots of payments to the Associated Press and the New York Times. Musk called the New York Times “government-funded media” after reposting screenshots of subscriptions the government bought from the outlet.

BBC Media Action, an international charity that supports and trains local journalists and outlets around the world, received funds from USAID that totaled about 8% of the charity’s income in 2023-24. The charity is “completely separate from BBC News,” it has said, and does not produce news itself.

It’s the old shell game communists play pretending the left hand doesn’t know what the other left hand is doing. Unasked of course is why a British government news outlet needs money from the USA to finance its summer propaganda training camps.

Now one thing I share in common with the late John McCain is that when I look into Putin’s eyes, I see KGB. That means he’s evil, sure, but it also means he knows his stuff. He gave Tucker Carlson an interview a year ago, which Politico fact-checked:

What he said: “In the war of propaganda, it is very difficult to defeat the United States because the United States controls all the world’s media and many European media. The ultimate beneficiaries of the biggest European media are American financial institutions.”

Why he’s wrong: The biggest news media companies are privately owned and operate without direct government control, in contrast to the state-controlled media landscape in Russia. Russian state TV and the primary news agencies there are the property of the government, and the Kremlin controls other media or destroys those not willing to collaborate.

In 2023, Russian authorities threw 28 reporters behind bars, according to Reporters Without Borders. Among them were two American citizens: Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, accused of espionage; and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, accused of failing to register as a “foreign agent.”

But Putin told the truth. Without direct control does not mean without control.

I support an independent media. I just wish we had one. Our media only pretends it is independent while living under the government’s thumb.

On March 7, 2024, NPR’s Charles Maynes reported on a new Russian law and said, “According to the language of the new law, it’s now a crime to spread false information or fake news about Russia’s armed forces or, I should add, to take any public actions that denigrate Russian soldiers in any way.

“Another part of the law punishes statements perceived to promote restrictions that harm the country—in other words, sanctions. And for that, there are serious penalties—not only monetary fines but in the most extreme cases, imprisonment, up to 15 years in jail.”

Russian law is the model being used by our federal government to abolish free speech.

Readers know that when politicians say we must ban misinformation, they are trying to turn America into a Putinocracy.

USAID got its money’s worth out of Politico, which reported, “A month ago, few Americans were familiar with the work of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Then Elon Musk and, to a lesser degree, President Donald Trump sought to make an example out of the agency, effectively dismantling USAID to ostensibly cut costs and root out liberals employed there.

“This predictably caused great upheaval in Washington. The shutdown confused the independent agency’s employees, infuriated Democrats and prompted Republicans who in the not-so-distant past called for more support to USAID to discard those statements and accommodate the impulses of Musk and Trump.”

It is not an independent agency. No department created by Congress is independent of the American people through the man they elect president. The Constitution requires the GS crowd to accommodate the impulses of President Trump.

But these are the lies Politico tosses out to keep up the morale of the readers of its propaganda machine. Perhaps I will call it Propagandatico. Nyah. Too many syllables.

After getting caught accepting the payoff, the media’s marketing strategy is to tell all us Dorothys (and our little DOGE too) to pay no attention to the paymaster behind the curtain.

Axios reported, “DOGE targets government media subscriptions after MAGA attacks.”

The story said, “Why it matters: It’s an easy political lever for the Trump administration to pull to undermine media without facing legal or regulatory hurdles.”

What an odd thing to say. The media claims that the government paying $10,000 each for a bunch of subscriptions does not affect the media’s coverage of the government but dropping those subscriptions does.

I wonder how many subscriptions to the Jeff Bezos Post taxpayers buy. I mean you work at a government office and there is not much to do during the day. What do you do with your time? Reading the newspaper makes sense.

However, this raises the question of how many government subscriptions were among the 25% of the subscribers that Bezos lost when he refused to endorse Kamala.

The answer to that question seemed to be like the answer to how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop; the world may never know.

The deep state had a good thing going until Musk and his meddling kids came along.

They found out many things including the fact that FEMA gave luxury hotels in New York City $59 million to house illegal aliens. Imagine the kickbacks hotels paid to get on the list of approved hotels.

Yo, Homan, just send ICE to the hotels and collect the deportables.

Musk has not ended the media bias but he stamped an expiration date on it.

The media will obey the marching orders from the deep state until publishers realize the Trump Train is here and the gravy train ain’t coming back.