The Media Research Center’s campaign to distract its fellow right-wingers away from President Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein continued in a Feb. 10 post by Joseph Vazquez:
Turns out even a broken clock can get it right twice a day. The New York Times just plastered their front-page with an exposé connecting the sadistic Jeffrey Epstein empire with the politically radioactive Clintons.
Following the release of long-awaited files pertaining to the Epstein case by the Department of Justice, Times investigative reporter Danny Hakim took a detour away from his employer’s never-ending Trump bashing to draft a February 8 story that’s sure to make liberal heads spin: “Epstein Files Reveal Scope of Ghislaine Maxwell’s Role in Clinton Circle.”
What made this even more impression was it is something none of the CBS or NBC flagship morning or evening newscasts have been able to do. ABC has mustered only one mention thanks to Capitol Hill correspondent Jay O’Brien on Monday’s Good Morning America.
Curtis Houck pulled the same lame trick in a Feb. 13 post:
This week, reports surfaced that the Epstein Files contain a litany of messages outlining a deep-seated personal and professional relationship between the disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and former Obama White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler.
As a result, she resigned from her high-ranking post at Goldman Sachs. Despite the thousand-plus minutes of Epstein coverage on the flagship newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC since July, the latter two have decided to ignore it.
ABC, in contrast, gave it a quick, 35-second nod on Friday’s Good Morning America with congressional correspondent Jay O’Brien telling viewers that Ruemmler was “resigning from her current role as the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs after it was revealed…she and Epstein had a lengthy correspondence, including years after he first pleaded guilty to sex crimes.”
Despite that admission, Mark Finkelstein spent a post the next day insisting the relationship between Trump and Epstein was of no real consequence:
On Friday’s Morning Joe, the MS NOW panelists delivered a remarkable formulation regarding President Trump and the Jeffrey Epstein matter: they repeatedly portrayed Trump as looking “guilty” — while conceding they do not know what, if anything, he actually did.
The segment began with a clip of Trump responding to a reporter’s question about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s past visit to Epstein’s Caribbean island. Trump said he was unaware of the visit and emphasized, “I was never there.”
That didn’t prevent the discussion from quickly shifting to speculation about Trump’s demeanor and possible wrongdoing.
MS NOW analyst John Heilemann declared that Trump and those around him have “acted guilty” throughout the controversy. He said their conduct makes it look as though they are “hiding things” and that Trump is “guilty of something.”
Then came the striking concession.
HEILEMANN: We still don’t really know what, if anything, Donald Trump did that might be illegal, that might be criminal, it might just be immoral.
The construction was telling. Even while admitting he does not know what Trump did — or whether any crime occurred — Heilemann suggested that whatever the conduct was, it was at least immoral—and possibly criminal.
Guilty of what? Immoral in what way? The panel did not specify.
Why is Epstein toxic for Clinton but not Trump? Finkelstein did not specify. P.J. Gladnick spent a Feb. 15 post whining:
A ghost story falls in the category of fantasy. And former ABC reporter Tara Palmeri’s Halloween-in-February hot take in Vanity Fair on Thursday, “Epstein’s Ghost Is Calling All the Shots in Trump’s White House,” certainly falls within the realm of fantasy. She updates Banquo’s ghost to the 21st century and engages in the fantasy that Epstein’s ghost is somehow haunting Trump’s every move.
Since no incriminating facts in the Epstein files could be found about Trump, Palmeri performs the pretense of somehow channeling the president’s soul and concluding that his every waking (and sleeping) moment is being haunted by Epstein’s ghost.
[…]Palmeri’s sole “proof” is that the New York Times (and the media), not Trump, is obsessed with uncovering something, ANYTHING that might link Trump in a deleterious way to Epstein, whether ghost or not. This is the media touting its own haunting power.
Gladnick might want to ask why, if there is nothing incriminating, Trump and his lackeys are hiding Epstein files related to him. But that’s not his job at the MRC — defending Trump is.