Opinion

NYT’s Latest Trump Story Follows A Familiar Pattern Of Breathlessly Reporting Routine Procedures

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Will Ricciardella Social Media Strategist and Politics Writer
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The establishment media’s hysteria is once again in high gear after news that members of the Trump transition team were ordered to preserve documents and other materials pertinent to the investigation into Russian interference of the election.

Trump’s transition team’s counsel, issuing a memo to satisfy routine requirements in any investigation, hardly called for the tone and seriousness with which it was reported. The New York Times asserts that the request “illustrated the seriousness of the inquiry” conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller, and how “deeply they are delving” into President Donald Trump’s activities.

Such rhetoric follows a longstanding pattern of the establishment media’s propensity to overreact to even the most routine circumstances with anything related to the president. The Washington Post’s Tom Nichols says that media personnel “seem determined to overreact on even ordinary matters.”

When the Department of Energy nixed some of the duplicative foreign climate change offices in an effort to increase efficiency, The Times described it as a “sign” of the president’s “retreat” on climate-related polices, although it did nothing to constitute a change in policy.

When the Trump administration “corrected an obstacle” on sanctions with Russia’s intelligence service (FSB), many politicos charged the Trump administration with rewarding the Russians for interference in the U.S. election. As it turned out, the sanctions lifted allowed the FSB to buy only American consumer goods related to communications, like cellphones and tablets.

Another recent example is Trump’s executive order labeled as a “Muslim ban,” despite doing no such thing. Rather, it temporarily restricts citizens of failed states in Muslim majority countries, irrespective of faith, from traveling to the U.S.

Panic ensued when Donald Trump “fired” all politically appointed ambassadors, without mention that they serve at the pleasure of the current president and that all were required to resign on inauguration day, which is completely ordinary with an incoming administration.

An honest reporting of the memo issued by the transition team should surely mention how this is standard operating procedure in any investigation, yet it is nowhere to be found. Instead, the routine nature of the request served as a vehicle for TheNYT to unjustifiably inflate the seriousness of the investigation.

Make no mistake, the Russia investigation is serious, but this request is standard of all investigations. Random IRS audits require the preservation of documents. TheNYT’s portrayal of the request as otherwise is flatly dishonest.

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