There was no \u201cweaponization\u201d of the Biden Justice Department. There are no \u201cvictims\u201d who deserve \u201ccompensation\u201d. The $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund the Trump administration announced on Monday is not a legal \u201csettlement\u201d of Trump\u2019s risible lawsuit against his own IRS.<\/p>\n
Everything about this heist of tax dollars is a lie and a fraud. In its scope and its shamelessness, it is arguably the most staggeringly corrupt act this country has ever seen. It is a screaming red alert for democracy, a sign of the debasement and decline of our government to banana-republic levels.<\/p>\n
From a journalistic perspective, this is all crucial context. What Trump did on Monday can\u2019t just be announced, using the administration\u2019s deceitful language. It must be explained. It must be identified as aberrational. Anything short of that is misinformation. It abets complacency.<\/p>\n
And yet our major news outlets on Monday shied away from bluntly confronting their readers and viewers, choosing instead the lazy, deceptive route of using Trumpian terms in their headlines and leads, only later countered by \u201ccritics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their headlines repeatedly described the deal as \u201cunusual\u201d \u2013 arguably the weakest adjective they could possibly have used.<\/p>\n
In some cases \u2013 particularly at the New York Times web site \u2013 editors pooh-poohed the whole story, letting it fall almost entirely off the home page within a few hours.<\/p>\n
The biggest news on Monday — and it was very big news indeed — was not DOJ\u2019s deceitful announcement itself, but what it signified. The headlines should have reflected that. Something like:<\/p>\n
My dear editor friends: You can\u2019t let Trump describe something as an \u201canti-weaponization fund\u201d — even in quote marks — without declaring loudly and clearly that the alleged \u201cweaponization\u201d was in fact the application of justice, involving guilty pleas and searing jury verdicts — and that it is Trump who has weaponized the Justice Department by using bogus investigations and failed prosecutions to punish people who stood up to him.<\/p>\n
And yet the Wall Street Journal headlined its article: \u201cJustice Department Creates Unusual $1.8 Billion \u2018Anti-Weaponization Fund\u2019<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The Washington Post, which for a while embraced the passive voice — \u201cIn unusual deal, a $1.8 billion fund that could help Trump allies is created<\/a>\u201d — \u00a0eventually settled on \u201cTrump\u2019s deal to drop suit against IRS creates $1.8B \u2018Anti-Weaponization Fund\u2019<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n NBC headlined its coverage \u201cDOJ sets up $1.7B \u2018anti-weaponization\u2019 fund after Trump drops IRS lawsuit<\/a>.\u201d CBS said: \u201cTrump settles IRS lawsuit, sets up $1.7B fund for claims of \u2018weaponization\u2019<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier Monday morning, Trump dropped his lawsuit against his own IRS \u2013 and its laughable $10 billion demand \u2013 amid signs that Judge Kathleen M. Williams was going to throw it out<\/a> because Trump couldn\u2019t sue himself.<\/p>\n Notably, there was no \u201csettlement\u201d in the case. To be clear: \u201cThere is no settlement of record,\u201d Judge Williams wrote<\/a> on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s flunkies at the Justice Department and the IRS tried to frame it as a settlement \u2013 even drafting something that looked like one<\/a>. But legally, the two moves were unrelated: First Trump dropped the case. Then the Justice Department announced the new fund.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, journalists who should have known better embraced the Trump narrative, with its attempt to give the move a patina of legality.<\/p>\n NPR\u2019s coverage was particularly na\u00efve. \u201cJudge dismisses Trump’s IRS lawsuit, paving the way for a settlement<\/a>,\u201d Carrie Johnson reported.<\/p>\n \u201cDOJ rolls out nearly $1.8B \u2018anti-weaponization fund\u2019 as part of Trump\u2019s IRS settlement<\/a>,\u201d Politico\u2019s Josh Gerstein\u00a0and\u00a0Danny Nguyen reported stenographically. Like many other outlets, Politico quoted Todd Blanche \u2013 Trump\u2019s former defense lawyer, now acting attorney general \u2013 without any pushback:<\/p>\n \u201cThe machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department\u2019s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,\u201d Blanche said in\u00a0a statement<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The gall!<\/p>\n \u201cDOJ offering $1.776 billion ‘lawfare’ fund to settle Trump IRS lawsuit<\/a>,\u201d proclaimed USA Today.<\/p>\n \u201cJustice Department announces nearly $1.8B fund to compensate Trump allies in a deal to drop IRS suit<\/a>,\u201d the Associated Press announced — as if there were something to \u201ccompensate\u201d anyone for.<\/p>\n The deal should also have been treated by news organizations as presumptively illegal \u2013 like most every other major policy move Trump has made<\/a>. In this particular case, it\u2019s even more obvious than usual. \u00a0Nothing like this has ever been done before. And the stipulations clearly violate the congressional intent behind DOJ\u2019s settlement fund: the $1.8 billion is to be deposited into a separate account, then distributed by a hand-picked board with almost no limits and no oversight; also, it it to be liquidated before Trump leaves office.<\/p>\n It will surely be challenged in court, and when judge after judge declares it illegal, the legacy media will act surprised.<\/p>\n The New York Times, which for some reason buried its coverage online, eventually published an article that went atop the print edition, headlined: \u201cJustice Dept. Sets Up $1.8 Billion Fund That Could Funnel Money to Trump Allies<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The article included a fair amount of context, including a fourth paragraph quote from Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, saying \u201cThis is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n But the overall format was still: Here\u2019s what the Trump people said; here\u2019s the alternate view. Here’s how they led the story:<\/p>\n The Trump administration announced on Monday the creation of a $1.8 billion fund to compensate those who claim they were targeted by the Biden Justice Department and Democrats, forging a pipeline to funnel taxpayer money to President Trump\u2019s allies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What the readers deserved was the \u201ctruth sandwich\u201d instead. Something like:<\/p>\n In what experts called an unparalleled act of corruption, the Trump administration announced on Monday the creation of a $1.8 billion fund to funnel taxpayer money to Trump supporters who have falsely claimed that they were targeted by the Biden Justice Department and Democrats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And where are the news analyses? Where are the second-day stories, raising a legion of concerns?<\/p>\n The New York Times does get credit for a second-day story of sorts, by Andrew Duehren<\/a>, revealing the existence of an internal memo in which IRS lawyers cited a number of weaknesses in Trump’s lawsuit and urged the Justice Department to get it thrown out of court. But Duehren’s descriptions of the fund itself are anemic.<\/p>\n And Politico’s Josh Gerstein<\/a> reported on a wild, sweeping one-page document<\/a> posted on the DOJ website early Tuesday, which states that the IRS is \u201cforever barred and precluded\u201d from pursuing \u201cexaminations\u201d of Trump, \u201crelated or affiliated individuals,\u201d and related trusts and businesses.<\/p>\n The only strong news analysis I saw in the major legacy news outlets was by CNN\u2019s Stephen Collinson, headlined \u201cTrump\u2019s compensation plan is a metaphor for a brazen presidency<\/a>.\u201d It was sadly confined to beyond CNN\u2019s new paywall. Collinson wrote:<\/p>\n President Donald Trump\u2019s new\u00a0$1.776 billion fund<\/a>\u00a0to compensate allies who claim they were unfairly targeted by the Biden administration is the kind of scheme that might once have irrevocably stained a presidency.<\/p>\n Yet Trump has spent years shattering ethical expectations surrounding his office. His brazen leadership has long shed the power to shock.<\/p>\n Still, the plan, announced by the Justice Department on Monday and denounced by critics as a slush fund, is a study of his political project in microcosm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n On a personal level, I found the coverage of this travesty pretty damn depressing.<\/p>\n If our news organizations are incapable of conveying to the public how extraordinarily and alarmingly corrupt it is for Trump to take $1.8 billion in tax dollars and put it into a slush fund for people willing to break the law for him, well, I just don\u2019t know what the point of it all is.<\/p>\n The post News headlines adopted Trump\u2019s deceptive framing of his new $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund<\/a> appeared first on Press Watch<\/a>.<\/p>\r\nThere Was No Settlement<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Presumptively Illegal<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Even the Best Wasn\u2019t Good Enough<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\r\n
Source link presswatchers.org<\/a>\r\n
The recent announcement of a $1.8 billion fund by the Trump administration, framed as an “anti-weaponization fund” for those claiming to be targeted by the Biden Justice Department, is criticized as corrupt and misleading. The fund follows Trump dropping his frivolous lawsuit against the IRS, which had no legitimate settlement. Media outlets are faulted for using Trumpian language, failing to present the fund as the “slush fund” it truly is, and not challenging its legal and ethical implications. Critics argue that this represents a significant deterioration of governmental integrity, and that media coverage needs to emphasize the situation’s gravity more clearly.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was no \u201cweaponization\u201d of the Biden Justice Department. There are no \u201cvictims\u201d who deserve \u201ccompensation\u201d. The $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund the Trump administration announced on Monday is not a legal \u201csettlement\u201d of Trump\u2019s risible lawsuit against his own IRS. Everything about this heist of tax dollars is a lie and a fraud. In its scope and its shamelessness,…","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":2394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}