We need What Aboutism Now
Why is Trump getting a free pass
The debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is all over the news and top of mind for the chattering classes. Neither candidate did well. Nor did the moderators. The biggest takeaway is the performance of President Biden.
Now the news cycle is dominated by the calls for him to step down from the ticket. Reporters interview voters, candidates and office holders alike about their sudden lack of confidence in the Democratic candidate.
Few of those reports contain any semblance of fairness.
Donald Trump’s candidacy and debate performance get a fraction of the scrutiny of Biden’s.
Trump’s debate performance was a firehose of lies, so persistent that if Biden used his time to call out the lies, he would have no time left to give us reasons to support him.
And now, days later, the news media barely mentions his lies. And this is relevant in the context of the subject of the reporting. The debate performance of both candidates is the story. Leaving out Trump’s falsehoods lets him off the hook. But no scrutiny from the media.
In 2016, the media bent over backwards to appear fair and unbiased. Every story about Trump’s defects as a person and candidate contained a couple of paragraphs or reference to emails. As if Hillary did not spend 11 hours answering questions about that. None of that was pertinent to the story about Trump, but the media fed news consumers a steady diet of stories about emails when they reported on Trump.
Now, we should have Whataboutism. The story is that both candidates did poorly on the debate. One appeared old. One could not stop lying.
More than that, Trump’s candidacy threatens the capability of the government to function, if he wins the election. The decisions by the Supreme Court last week doom us to a future that increases the problems our country faces, both in degree and number.
Every story about Biden’s debate performance should include references to Trump’s plans as president and the multiple indictments he faces.
