Harris is powerfully challenging corporate media to stop normalizing the felon, rapist and man who attempted a coup!
She is taking the fight to Trump!
It’s impossible to count how many times in the years that followed MAGA’s Jan 6 terrorist attack that I vocally slammed the corporate media for normalizing Donald Trump. My ire grew as we increasingly witnessed corporate media began to cover Trump as simply a politician—as opposed to the man who not only attempted a coup but was the reason for the Jan 6 attack. As I often screamed, “Would the media ever write a story about Bin Laden but not mention 9/11?! Of course, not!” My point was that every news article or segment on Trump should include references to Trump’s attempted coup and Jan 6 attack because Trump and his anti-democratic actions should never be normalized.
Obviously, I lost that battle. No where was that more apparent then the recent Republican National Convention where corporate media failed to include coverage of Trump’s attempted coup—for which he faces criminal charges—his role in the Jan 6 attack and his praising the Trump loving attackers as “warriors” who he has vowed to pardon. Nor was there any extensive coverage of Trump being a convicted felon for cheating in the 2016 election and recently being adjudicated a rapist.
But Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign are now trying to reverse that—or at least ensure corporate media includes these key facts in their coverage. We saw this right out of the gate with Harris’s very first speech after becoming a candidate on Monday. That’s when Harris told the crowd at her campaign headquarters that as a prosecutor, “I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.” She then added to big cheers, “So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”
She repeated that message Tuesday at her very first rally to a packed audience in Wisconsin, telling them, “As a prosecutor, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse. Well, Trump was found liable for committing sexual abuse.” She added, “As attorney general of California, I took on the big Wall Street banks and held them accountable for fraud,” noting, “Donald Trump was just found guilty of fraud on 34 counts.”
Since Tuesday, Harris’s campaign has very vocally leaned into Trump’s convictions and his role in Jan 6. One of the most glaring examples came by way of Harris’s short, but memorable digital ad that features Trump whining at a rally that Harris is saying, “I’m the prosecutor, and he is the convicted felon.” Boom! Harris turned Trump’s own words against him in the ad you can see below:
After Trump called into Fox News this week, the Harris campaign released a cutting statement that read: “Statement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal’s Fox News Appearance” that detailed the dangerous comments by Trump such as “When Trump wasn’t lying, he was making threats.”
Another press statement from the campaign this week point blank made the focus Trump’s role in the Jan 6 terrorist attack, writing, “Trump inspired a violent mob to attack the Capitol building in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election” and “Trump encouraged loyalists to attack those who criticized his involvement in the insurrection, including his own vice president.”
The statement also included references to Trump’s despicable praise of his MAGA terrorists, noting: “Trump promised supporters he would deliver “retribution” and pardon convicted January 6 rioters, who he referred to as “hostages.”
Then there was Trump’s jaw-dropping remarks this weekend. First, Trump told an audience in Florida about voting, “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what – it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore.” (Trump is not even trying to be subtle!)
The Harris campaign quickly responded with a searing press release that began with the headline, “Statement on Trump’s Promise to End Democracy.” The release continued with lines like, “Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump: After the last election Trump lost, he sent a mob to overturn the results. This campaign, he has promised violence if he loses, the end of our elections if he wins.”
And Saturday night, Trump held rally in Minnesota claiming he could only lose the state if there was election fraud. In reality, Trump is down by six points to Harris in a new Fox News poll released earlier in the day. But Trump is clearly laying the groundwork to delegitimize his loss and potentially incite another Jan 6 attack.
In response, the Harris campaign released a statement that read, “Tonight in Minnesota, a bitter, unhinged, 78-year-old convicted felon kept clinging to his lies about the 2020 election he lost being ‘rigged,’ rambled about his former opponent and golfing, and made excuses for why he’s afraid to debate Vice President Harris.”
The reason these statements and their tone matter is that in countless articles this week, corporate media included at least part of the Harris campaign’s words. For example, the NY Times today quoted the Harris statement in their coverage of Trump’s Minnesota rally including the line, “a bitter, unhinged, 78-year-old convicted felon kept clinging to his lies about the 2020 election he lost being ‘rigged.’”
That means more people are finally being reminded Trump is not a normal candidate, but a true threat to our nation. We know this won’t move MAGA supporters—who actually are on board with Trump’s coup, etc. But for independents and even Democrats not yet motivated to vote, this type of coverage will hopefully remind them that not voting could hand the White House to this anti-democratic dangerous, rapist.
We are now 100 days until November 5, which I call “Judgement Day.” A lot will transpire between now and then. But what we are seeing from Harris in the first week of her campaign has energized all of us. As the Vice President declared at her fiery rally on Tuesday, “When we fight…we win!!” Well, Harris is doing her part by taking the fight to Trump on a daily basis. The rest fails on us. And from what I’ve seen and heard this week, we are all too ready to fight!
Fantastic that she and her team are aggressively going on offensive.
I am really glad that Kamala is telling the truth about trump, getting it out there to large numbers of people. She is proving that having a history as a prosecutor - a very serious prosecutor - is a good thing, something we need to finally topple trump. Now, if only the misogyny would stop…