I could write full posts about many of these, and if I had time, I would. The networks and the Axis want to ignore it and are trying to bury it in negatives, but the event is obviously news, and attention should be paid….
Observations:
1. Competence! If this was the President’s idea, it was a great one. The GOP has to get voters to the polls (or to mailboxes, if he can’t stem mail-in balloting). If the event picks up just one or two percentage points in Republican voter participation, it will have been a success. If Republicans hold Congress, I guarantee both parties will make this tactic a tradition.
Incidentally, adding a mid-term convention is another so-called “democratic norm” that Trump is violating. The Horror.
2. Fetterman! One of the two biggest stories to come out of last night’s opening of the convention was Senator John Fetterman’s surprise video appearance, shot in front of a steel mill. Fetterman praised and endorsed his fellow Pennsylvania Senator David McCormick, a Republican, and said that they would work together “and work with President Trump and defend the steel way of life.” This makes Fetterman the Ethics Hero of the convention thus far. It also tells Democrats that if they are going to try convict Trump after a House impeachment and try to pack the Supreme Court, they will need to flip an extra Senate seat to their side.
I have a backlog of significant and interesting ethics developments so I’ll be posting a multi-issue collection a bit later today. This latest example of the disgusting bias of the news media as it tries to rig the mid-terms against Republicans so the Democrats can “stand up to Trump”—meaning obstruct his performance of his job with multiple impeachments in the House—is worthy of a solo call-out.
The obvious inference a reader is supposed to take from that headline is that all those people in Nepal were killed because of Evil Donald Trump. This reflects back to the Axis theme when DOGE started cutting funds that had nothing to do with the USA: “People will die!” It was a stupid appeal to emotion even to the extent that it was true: The United States isn’t responsible for the lives of everyone in the world. Incredibly, the same progressives who want the U.S. to pay to save lives everywhere in the world (you can’t get much more remote than Nepal) also are trying to make the National Debt a Democratic issue. The two positions are completely incompatible, but never mind. The party thinks the public is stupid, and issues messages accordingly. Or Democrats are stupid. Or both.
Just to get the framing straight: The Axis news media reflexively states that President Trump’s long-standing position that the 2020 Presidential Election was “fixed,” “rigged” or “stolen” is “baseless.” This is, as EA has pointed out many times, deliberate disinformation and the product of pernicious bias.
While it is impossible to prove that the election was “stolen” and that Trump actually won (and thus he should quit saying that, but you know he won’t) there is plenty of basis for the claim that the 2020 election was rigged, etc. The news media sees no “base” for that because the news media is what rigged it.
Indeed, far from being merely a legitimate basis for a theory, the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s powerful journalism wing’s four year-long efforts to mislead, frighten and enrage voters for the purpose of bringing down Trump and his first administration are blazingly etched in the tablets of history like the Ten Commandments are carved in stone by God in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”:
The fake “Russiagate” story
The routine negative tilt of virtually all Trump Presidency coverage not on Fox News
The hostile badgering by the White House Press Corps, exemplified by CNN’s Jim Acosta
The press’s cheerleading for the first purely partisan impeachment
The fearmongering in the news media to force and support the insane national shutdown during the pandemic, crashing what had been a successful economy under Trump (and making the dubious election procedures used in the election possible).
The failure of reporters to raise the already evident issue of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline during the campaign (I noticed it; why didn’t they?)
The Hunter Biden laptop cover-up.
Amazingly, that’s not a complete list. Not even close.
Despite some backlash and scattered efforts to reform, the news media is still determined to bring Trump down and reverse his policies. Current and ongoing efforts include vilifying I.C.E, extolling “good illegal immigrants,” promoting the most extreme agenda items of the pro-transsexual fad (or, more properly, social contagion), obsessing over relative trivia (the Kennedy Center, et al.) while burying indisputable policy successes, and broadcasting dubious polls Again, that is a partial list. The lies, spin, misrepresentations and instances of journalists acting as Democratic (and, mirabile dictu, Democratic Socialist/Communist) activists is now intensifying as the 2026 mid-terms approach. The Axis wants the Democrats to control Congress so the President can be neutralized by an endless stream of House impeachments until the end of his term, whereupon Democratic prosecutors can work to put him in jail after as many show trials as it takes. Apparently it also wants non-citizens to vote, elections to be intrinsically untrustworthy, the borders to be open again, as many unborn babies as possible killed, women getting trounced by biological males in women’s sports, a rigged Supreme Court, more crimes in major cities, and permanent discrimination against whites males, among other blessings.
All of this is a long prelude to noting how CNN, through its venerable hack Wolf Blitzer, spread a lie last week about the substance of Trump’s (excellent and necessary) attempt to limit mail-in ballots.
One side benefit of having to watch all the Red Sox games as Boston closes in on a serious run for the 2026 World Series is getting a chance to see the various campaign ads for Congressional candidates in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and the other New England states served by the New England Sports Network (NESN) that broadcasts the games to “Red Sox Nation.” Let me rephrase that: getting the chance to see how idiotic the ads are.
The one you see above, by Democrat Chris Pappas, is easily the best of the dozens of ads I have seen, and it’s idiotic—infuriatingly vague, misleading, and using broad innuendos that don’t make any sense.
What restaurant has “VIP sections”? The analogy between a restaurant and Congress is so strained it makes my brain hurt. What does “play by their own rules” mean?
I view any Democrat as ethically estopped from complaining about members of Congress engaging in stock trading. The most powerful Democrat in Congress for decades, Nancy Pelosi, was also the most flagrant beneficiary of Congressional inside trading. The Trump Administration has done a great deal to lower prescription drug prices, but nothing except nationalized health care or government guaranteed income can prevent citizens from having to make choices regarding how to spend their money.
But, again, this is by far the best ad I’ve seen. Several boast that they should be elected to Congress to “stand up to Trump.” What does that mean? The Democrats will vote against anything Trump supports even if its rainbows and lollipops. “Standing up to Trump” means what, making mean faces at him? Insulting him, like members of The Squad or Jasmine Crockett? How does that help constituents? Many also say they will “stand up to” or “oppose” I.C.E. Does that mean they support open borders? Do they not want to get the dangerous illegals out of their constituency? Or are these just meaningless, focus group-tested buzz words? Almost all of them say that if elected they will “bring costs down.” Do they not know that costs as a whole never “come down,” do they think people are so stupid they don’t know that, or are people so stupid they really think that?
Maybe it’s my imagination, but I don’t think so: I remember campaign ads once containing occasional genuine, practical, achievable policy positions. Now its all virtue signaling: Elect me because I hate Trump. Elect me because I don’t like I.C.E. Elect me because I’d really like to do all of these things I won’t have the power to do but at least I have good intentions.
One of the few downsides of my resuming full attention to the weird Boston Red Sox 2026 season is that I now have to watch the paid political ads between innings on NESN, the New England Sports Network that broadcasts Sox and Bruins games.
As background [Note:this is NOT a baseball-related post, so ye who have been deprived of love for the National Pastime by a quirks of mysterious God, don’t stop reading], the team played so wretchedly for so long—three full months—that I was forced to suspend viewership just to preserve my sanity, as all rational analysis led to the unavoidable conclusion that the team was a hopeless, inexplicable flop despite what should have been sufficient talent to compete, and watching the group find infuriating ways to lose was a waste of time and emotion. Unexpectedly, and almost without precedent in baseball history, Boston climbed from a dismal 32–46 record on June 24 and a 1% playoff probability to 61–51, capturing the second American League Wild Card spot and tying an 80-year-old franchise record with a 15-game winning streak. They are now in the midst of a new 6 game streak now, and are playing exciting, spirited baseball, most recently sweeping the Best Team Money Can Buy, the L.A. Dodgers, in the Evil Empire’s home stadium.
But the political ads! They are insulting, as the authors obviously believe Red Sox fans are morons, and, to be fair since I read the comments after team reports, many certainly are.
Ethics Alarms 