Once again, thanks to everyone who has contributed so far to our annual Happy Hollandaise fundraiser. It’s reassuring to know that people value what we do here and want us to continue as we face the next year of difficult challenges. I am so appreciative of your continued encouragement and support.
As I contemplate the next year of covering politics, I can’t help but think about our probable new FBI Director Kash Patel’s famous declaration:
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.” — Kash Patel, future FBI Director.
Trump just showed one of those tactics is already working with that ABC settlement of 15 million and a forced apology from Trump nemesis George Stephanopoulos. It’s ugly.
This morning he held a press conference and indicated that he expect to do more of this and it appears he thinks it will work:
He has sued for defamation before and lost. But he seems to think, perhaps correctly, that he has the media on the run. This ABC capitulation sends a strong message that it’s best to play ball and you can imagine that plenty of corporate media leaders want their people to go easy right now. The zeitgeist seems to be that Trump is a colossus who must be appeased.
I suspect that independent media is going to be more important than ever. We’re looking at a period of tremendous stress on the information ecosystem with massive disinformation and propaganda programs, the right wing media encroaching on all public spheres, big money manufacturing Trump friendly press for its own purposes and the degradation of the kind of traditional media that might have operated outside all of this. The ability to find out the truth and make rational decisions for ourselves and our country as a democracy is very tenuous right now.
We’ll keep fighting the good fight here, spending our time seeking out the truth as we see it. There’s an awful lot to sort through these days but it is possible to do it if you have the time and the experience to cut through the bullshit. Here at Hullabaloo we’ve been at this a while and although we’re hardly perfect, we have pretty well honed BS detectors.
If you think it’s valuable to have independent analysis and a view of our politics from beyond the beltway, I hope you’ll throw a few coins into the Hullabaloo stocking if you can. But even if you don’t, please stop by from time to time. We are here seven days a week trying to make sense of this crazy world.
Keep the faith.
cheers,
digby