During Donald Trump’s on fraud centered around his attempt launder hush money to Stormy Daniels as a business expense, the Media Research Center had little to say about the underlying affair, preferring instead to bash the accuser for being a porn star (and not Trump for having an affair with a porn star). So it’s a bit rich to hear the MRC complain about a long-ago alleged affair by Doug Emhoff before he married Kamala Harris. Tim Graham groused in an Aug. 17 post:
Almost two weeks after the news broke, NPR’s All Things Considered told listeners that “Second Gentleman” Doug Emhoff wasn’t a gentleman with his first wife. It came in an otherwise promotional piece by reporter Deepa Shivaram.
First, they noted he’s been on the campaign trail advocating for “reproductive rights,” claiming it’s “barbaric and immoral” to deny abortions. He speaks out for Israel, since he is Jewish.
The entire adultery mess was dismissed in 51 words, and left out more negative details.
We don’t recall Graham demanding “more negative details” about Trump’s affair with Daniels. Instead, he eagerly parroted those details as provided by a British tabloid:
That’s it. Shivaram left out what the London Daily Mail originally reported: Emhoff had an affair with his children’s blonde nanny, Najen Naylor. “A close friend with direct knowledge of the affair and pregnancy told DailyMail.com that Naylor did not keep the child – though her social media shows a video of a mysterious baby girl named Brook in 2009, the year the baby would have been born.”
[…]So rooting for the Rams should cause people to vote Harris — and cheating on your wife with the nanny is not expected to matter in the election. That’s strange spin.
But Graham doesn’t want Trump’s affair with Daniels to matter in the election, so why should Emhoff’s aiffair? Graham also failed to note that the Daily Mail is a right-wing tabloid.
Still, Graham whined in his Aug. 19 podcast: “When the story emerged on August 3 that Kamala’s husband Douglas Emhoff destroyed his first marriage by cheating with the nanny (who got pregnant), ABC offered zero seconds. NBC offered 25. CBS was the ‘leader’ with 52 seconds.” He didn’t acknowledge that this is the level of non-covereage he wants for Trump’s multiple adulteries.
Curtis Houck huffed in an Aug. 21 post that ABC correspondent Mary Bruce “also “had some love for Second Gentlemen Doug Emhoff, but nothing about recent revelations about Emhoff having an affair with the nanny of his children during his first marriage (and getting her pregnant). The same day, he grumbled that coverage of Emhoff’s speech at the Democratic National Copnention had “no mention of Emhoff causing his first marriage to fall apart when he had an affair with and impregnated his childrens’ nanny.” Houck didn’t mention in either post that this is the level of coverage his and his employer have demanded on Trump’s adultery.
Graham returned to whine more about his in a Sept. 20 post bashing an interview with Emhoff conducted by ABC’s Michael Strahan (while again staying silent about Trump’s adultery):
The most shameless omission in this Strahan piece came in touting Emhoff’s family and his first wife… and saying absolutely nothing about what we just learned on August 3 about how he broke up his first marriage: He cheated on his wife with the nanny and impregnated her. As far as we can tell, ABC has yet to report this on air! ABC-slash-DNC just stuck with feeling Doug’s pain about J.D. Vance and Sarah Huckabee Sanders mocking Kamala as childless:
When another anonymous attack on Emhoff came from that same right-wing British tabloid — this time, a claim that he slapped a woman — Houck served up his usual narrative of whining that non-right-wing channels weren’t repeating an anonymous allegation from a tabloid in an Oct. 3 post, while going on to praise his favorite fake-balanced channel: “In contrast, NewsNation has had robust coverage with 30 minutes and 50 second on the allegations reported by Daily Mail senior writer Josh Boswell (which made anonymously by three friends of the woman whom Emhoff dated) and the double standard if these claims were made against a Republican.”
Houck then praised tabloid reporter Boswell for being “the first to reveal the Second Gentleman’s first marriage fell apart following an affair with the nanny and elementary school teacher of his daughters. In addition, he got the nanny pregnant, but the child did not survive.” That was followed by Houck defending the honor of a dubious right-wing tabloid: “While naysayers may dismiss the Daily Mail outright, Boswell noted Emhoff himself confirmed the affair only hours after publication.”
The same day, Jorge Bonilla similarly praised the right-wing tabloid for pushing the slap story as well as the affair story: “Emhoff admitted to impregnating his nanny, who also served as his daughter’s second grade teacher. There were also these disturbing details with regard to the way the nanny’s pregnancy ended, which many assumed was via an abortion.” Bonilla then built a conspiracy theory about that:
How, exactly, does one cause a miscarriage? Why was there the need to tie it all up around an NDA? We don’t know, because we have a Regime Media that is uninterested in doing such things as the most basic journalism, which consists of asking questions.
Contrast l’affaire Emhoff with the incessant coverage of every lurid detail pertaining to Donald Trump’s business records trial, especially the salacious portions of the trial. The viewing public over at ABC, NBC, and CBS were force-fed this bilge. Not so with Emhoff.
Bonilla didn’t explain why details of Trump paying hush money to a porn star with whom he had an affair si “bilge” while anonymous claims about a prominent Democrat are not.
Graham was still obsessing over it in an Oct. 9 post, whining that the host of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, in her interview with Harris, “wasn’t going to ask about her husband Doug Emhoff ruining his first marriage by cheating with the nanny and getting her pregnant.” As if any MRC employee would dare to ask Trump about his sordid hush-money scandal if given the opportunity.