Media Slandering Trump Allies, Has Learned Nothing
Trump, not lying media, should get to decide who goes into his administration. Also: Podcast with CEO of Tucker Carlson Network Neil Patel.
Some Democrats are taking an introspective look at what went wrong for them in the elections they just lost resoundingly. The group is small, as most progressives are still in shock and disbelief at the rebuke voters inflicted. The fight for the future of a defeated party is usually long and hard, often requiring one or more additional presidential contest losses at the hands of voters. It only ends when the party picks a nominee who wins the presidency.
You would think the media would also be conducting a what-went-wrong exercise. The failure of their brazen advocacy for the losers and implication that the public they claim to serve no longer believes them ought to spur some soul searching. But you would be wrong to assume this is occurring.
Instead, the media is returning to its playbook from 2017 of ruthlessly attacking Trump advocates and prospective officeholders, facts be damned.
Take for example Andy Puzder. President Trump nominated Puzder to be the Secretary of Labor in his first term. The former CEO of CKE Enterprises, which is the parent of Carl’s Jr. and Hardees quick-service restaurants, was ideal given his knowledge of businesses big and small and their workers who bore the brunt of the lost decade of economic stagnation that helped elevate Trump to the White House.
Unable to fault Puzder on his qualifications, the media and Democrats colluded to smear him personally. They said he opposed the minimum wage, had a track record of mismanagement, and abused his wife physically during their divorce in the late 1980s.
There was just one problem with that last slander: both Puzder and his ex-wife, Lisa Fierstein, said there had been no physical abuse. Your read that right, both eyewitnesses to the events said there was no abuse. But the media persisted in spreading the lie.
True, Fierstein had originally claimed abuse decades prior to Puzder’s nomination. But she recanted, telling the Senate that she was put up to the false claim. She had been pressured by an unethical divorce lawyer who hated Puzder for his pro-life political views. Fierstein wrote to the Senate committee handling Puzder’s nomination: “First, let me be clear. Andy is not and was not abusive or violent. He is a good, loving, kind man and a deeply committed and loving father. He is, as my own father noted years ago, the ‘salt of the earth.’” (That letter to the Senate and a cordial email from Fierstein to Puzder are enclosed.)
Later in that year of 2017, the MeToo movement emerged, in which the key takeaway was supposed to be “believe women.” Too often, as in the case of predatory Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, the media and other powerful people had ignored the allegations and testimony of abused women. They repeated this offensive conduct in ignoring Fierstein’s testimony that the abuse claims being bandied about in the press were phony. Apparently, the media knew better than the woman.
The other claims against Puzder were phony too. He never opposed the minimum wage; he just observed that increases above what the labor market could bear would lead to higher unemployment. Furthermore, the company he ran was squeaky clean. Some of its many franchisees—by definition separate companies that CKE did not control—inevitably had some labor violations, but they were minor and unrelated to Puzder.
But the facts didn’t matter. When Puzder withdrew his nomination because weak-kneed Senate Republicans didn’t want to fight, the newsroom at leftwing Politico erupted in applause. Like much of today’s media, they were political warriors, not reporters, and they had just used lies and slander to bag a Trump cabinet nominee. From then on it was persistent open season on Trump nominees and allies.
Now the media is at it again. The New Republic ran a picture of Trump as Hitler in June above the title of “American Fascism,” and recently smeared Puzder preemptively, just in case Trump nominates or appoints him again.
Engaging in what could meet the legal standard of “actual malice” for slander, the New Republic regurgitated the same smears from 2017: Puzder supposedly abused his wife, opposed the minimum wage, and abused workers. As in 2017, the lies are still lies and the reason for attacking Puzder remains the same: he is an aggressive advocate for Trump’s economic policies. No week goes by without Puzder addressing a national audience on the virtue of Trump’s first term and the economic policies he has proposed for his second. Puzder even wrote a book, “The Capitalist Comeback,” about Trump’s successes.
Puzder is not alone in the crosshairs of an unrepentant media. While Trump has named only a small number of people who will serve in his administration, the media is hard at work trying to personally destroy any who might participate. For example, there is an entire media cottage industry at work against Elon Musk. Writing of Musk and Utah Senator Mike Lee, the New Republic modestly concluded, “Trump Allies Prove They’re Idiots.” A separate article called Musk “a noodlehead failure.” People magazine—still a thing apparently—has breathlessly tried to smear Musk’s personal life.
The antidote to this slander and to our corrupt media overall is winning. No one has been slandered more than Trump himself, and his perseverance against the media, his victory against all odds, and his almost-single-handed creation of a new media reality in America have exposed the old media for what it is and pushed it to the crisis it now faces. Clearly it is not yet ready to face this grim reality.
Attacks on people like Puzder should be seen for what they are: attacks on Trump by proxy. They should be handled by confronting and then surmounting the lying media, supporting new media outlets while undercutting the old, and making it clear that Trump, not the media, gets to decide who joins his administration.
Domino Theory: Neil Patel, CEO of the Tucker Carlson Network, on the Media
In our latest episode of Domino Theory, Co-Founder and CEO of the Tucker Carlson Network Neil Patel speaks with Mark Simon and me about the new media environment, what Trump has accomplished, and what he might do.
For example, must Trump cater to the effete corps of impudent snobs of the self-appointed White House Correspondents Association? Should Trump and his lieutenants forgive and forget the intense and mean-spirited bias against by him networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, and government-funded outlets like PBS, VOA, and NPR (Nicaraguan Public Radio)?
How about daily press briefings—a 1960s innovation—during which zero-accomplishment kiddos preen before cameras and attempt to spar with the White House spokesman? Is that the best way of informing the public of the president’s policies and plans?
The answer is no.
But it will take some doing to advance conservative media and give America the media it deserves. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and I wrote in the National Interest about drastically evolving the White House information environment when Trump first took office in 2017. Needless to say, the ideas were not implemented. But the suggestions remain: Trump can be unburdened by what has been. The president-elect has helped develop a new information environment for the past decade and he should press it to his advantage in office.
In addition to his work with Tucker, Neil is also the Co-Founder and Publisher of the Daily Caller and was the chief policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney during the Bush administration.
I read the Daily Caller every day and so should you. They do such a good job that they are categorized by Wikipedia, whose bosses are pinkos, as a “deprecated source,” meaning they can’t be cited in Wikipedia articles. If you’re ever extremely bored, look through the comments of how they got this designation in 2019, which is under reconsideration. I’ll give you the short version: progressive bedwetters didn’t like the news they were conveying. Incidentally, these same group of Wikipedia editors think that China Daily, NBC, and the New Republic are reliable sources, among other leftwing outlets.
These are reasons why Neil is a great guest for a discussion about the state of the media as the dust settles from the 2024 elections.
We also focus on the business side of the media. There’s a joke that when Fox News was launched in 1996, its boss, Roger Ailes, and owner, Rupert Murdoch, had discovered an obscure, under-served demographic called “half of America.” Appealing successfully to this group with a near-monopoly gifted by the rest of the media brought vast profit and profitability that continues to this day. Many suspected that this success would prompt a copycat response from some of the rest of the media. But that didn’t happen. The three incumbent TV networks from the last century, along with government-funded PBS and NPR and scores of internet properties are just as biased for the left as ever. In some cases, as with the New York Times, this is good business. But in other cases, it is not.
Many conservatives seem to think the free market will solve this eventually. But the reality is that almost every paper in America is anti-MAGA. That includes the supposedly conservative Wall Street Journal, which is run by foreigners. You’d think no one under 100 would still be watching network news, but ABC can still land 7 million viewers for its evening news; NBC can get around 6 million, and the sad frumps at CBS can get 4-5 million.
There’s the question of what, if anything, Republicans and the Trump administration can and should do about this situation. And does it matter as I have described it? Notwithstanding the numbers I just cited, podcasts, which aren’t new, seem to be playing a much bigger role in the news. So do commentators on X or TikTok. My cohost, Mark Simon, has previously observed that comedians who dabble in news and keep in funny—as opposed to the preachy old progressives of late-night network TV—are more trusted than journalists.
Check out our discussion with Neil, linked at full length below. I have also attached the transcript.
Some noteworthy excerpts:
Neil Patel on the success of podcasters like Tucker, Megyn Kelly, and Joe Rogan:
People do not put their trust in media brands the way they used to. They find an individual who they think is telling the truth and they follow that individual, they trust that individual, and they're very discerning about it. Both Megyn and Tucker have those types of followings when you have that kind of a following, especially in today's market, if you even know what you're doing, you can make it work so much better than you can on TV. It's just there's not a lot of drive to go back to a place like that.
Neil Patel on whether the political change seen in the election will drive change among advertisers and other media paymasters:
I think the interesting part of this election, the most interesting part to me was the realignment. And we talk a lot about the racial realignment. And if you look at the numbers, that's definitely interesting.
Diversity of the Republican party right now is crazy compared to the old days, but also a lot of the just purely political realignment a lot of the techie world coming out of the closet and saying, you know we're with trump and I think Elon being a leader in that world and coming out, we always had [Peter] Thiel and a couple of others but Sachs was always relatively well known as a conservative of some ilk, but I think Elon coming out and then a bunch of others I've been doing it.
I know when we started our company, we went around when we were doing our finance round and met with a lot of people, including a lot of founders in Silicon Valley, and a lot of them actually were very sympathetic, but weren't ready to come out publicly because of the social costs to them, or maybe the business costs to them.
I think that's eroding. I think you saw that in this election.
Neil Patel on whether Trump will ditch the White House Correspondents Association and the kiddos of the White House press corps:
Man, I don't know the answer, Christian, but I really hope they change it. And I do think they've been pretty innovative in how they've handled the press. Definitely on the campaign side.
Going back to 2016, Trump did more interviews with conservative media outlets than any Republican candidate before. It's funny, the Republicans know that one of the biggest obstacles is just this horrible press corps that's, basically designed to skew everything they say in the most negative light possible.
Yet when all of a sudden. The internet allowed for a ton of new conservative entrants into the news field. The people who helped them the least, the people who engaged them with the least, were like these Republican politicians. It never really made sense. They're just, they're beholden to the, legacy media brands.
And Trump was the first candidate that I can recall who's like, why aren't we doing all these conservative media outlets? They have millions of viewers or readers. So that was that campaign. Then this campaign, I think his use of all these podcasts and all these, comedy podcasts, young people, podcasts, barstool sports, just going on Rogan, actually doing three hours with Rogan, I don't know any other candidate who's done that.
They're clearly in innovation mode or, free-thinking mode about the media. Whether that carries through to actually wiping out of the cesspool, which is that, press briefing room. I think that'd be awesome. The media beclowned themselves this cycle. It's no longer the bias that you were talking about from the old days…
… And what world you then go into that briefing room and still take them all seriously and pretend that they're credible in any way. That's the norm. I would really hope if he blows it, that he does blow it up.
Neil Patel on the patriot economy:
This whole concept of a Patriot economy, it's in its earliest stages, but there are companies who are recognizing this, the Bid Light phenomena that we saw last year, where their sales of one of the biggest brands in all of America went down, I think 25 percent; a multi-billion dollar loss in revenue.
Lots of big brands took notice of that, but also lots of smaller brands said, wait a minute, like we can. fit ourselves into this dynamic by actually affirmatively going to that crowd, who's been generally neglected by the corporate world and pitching them. And so we're a natural place for that. And that’s happening today.
Neil Patel on Big Tech censorship of non-lefty media:
And I can tell you from the Daily Caller side of my business, everything changed in 2016 when Trump came in, it was a super-fast growing business. It was also a very healthy business from just from financial business perspective. And we got really good at a lot of things you need to do digital news wise to succeed.
And we, based on our scale and based on the fact that we knew how Google worked, 20 percent of our traffic came from Google search. Because we were highly engaging and we were digital first and, digital only we really knew how to do the social media thing and to put out our little clips and all that stuff.
And we got another 30 percent of our traffic from the big social media platforms. All that, so basically half our traffic--wiped out starting when Trump got elected. It was a slow process. [Big tech] kept clamping down more and more all artificially wiped out, by the way. I saw how digital media worked in the wild pre censorship [era].
And this is just one part of the censorship apparatus, just turning the dials down, basically downgrading the site on, on, in the algorithm, both for search and in the social media company platform algorithms. Half your traffic goes away. Very difficult. The whole business becomes very difficult in that sense.
The White House press room floor covers a nice indoor pool. Maybe uncover it and make the press corps tread water to ask their questions. I guarantee it'd get viewers.
The solution is simple. Give White House press passes to alternative media. I am sure Racket, The Free Press and other Substack outlets would hire a White House correspondent. Then let them ask most of the questions. Don’t take questions from the networks.