Collision of Propaganda and the Hubris of the Washington Post

Marty Baron as the King of Trump Hit Books

NOTE: Have fun with this one. I don’t usually do book reviews but this is the poster boy for fake news production.

Collision of Propaganda and the Hubris of the Washington Post

What do you get when you mix an astonishing lack of self-awareness with a liberal dose of self-righteousness?  Toxic Never-Trump propaganda like Collision of Power from the former Washington Post editor Marty Baron. 

Baron’s self-righteous claim he and the Amazon Post were not waging war against Donald Trump but simply “at work” smells like the Potomac in August.  As Baron produces the mother of all hit books, he expects us to believe the Post treated President Trump fairly.

Here’s the litmus test: If all you ever read was the WashPo during Baron’s tenure, would you know that, among his many achievements, President Trump built a rock-solid economy, cut crime rates, sealed our southern border, established American strategic energy dominance, and kept the jackals of Iran, Russia, North Korean and Communist China at bay with the fear POTUS instilled in those jackals’ hearts?  Of course not Marty.

On the lack of self-awareness front, Baron himself oversaw a dramatic increase in the Post’s muckraking Leftists.  Here, no one will EVER confuse the likes of Bob Costa, Bob Woodward, Carol Leonnig, or Phillip Rucker, among many others on Baron’s roster, with objective journalists.   

These guns for hire know Amazon Post readers hate Trump, and they have made a bleep-ton of money writing blockbuster, bilious works of anti-Trump fiction.  In producing such Leftist trash, the WashPo’s modus operandi is not that of transparent journalism.  Rather, it is a perennial game of gotcha fueled by anonymous sources with false narratives to spin and scores to settle. 

According to Marty Baron’s editorial rules  – to be fair, Woodward was doing it long before Baron ever arrived -- as long as you have at least two anonymous sources, you are good to go with whatever reality distortion these cowards hiding behind their deep background shields need to spin.  And if you can take a scalp like that of good men like Mike Flynn or Brett Kavanaugh more power to the Post.

I know this game of gotcha first hand from my four years in the White House.  Time after time, I bore witness to reporters across the Leftist media diaspora – Axios, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Politico, and of course Baron’s Post – publish hit piece after hit piece based on misinformation from anonymous sources with a Trump axe to grind.  That’s Marty Baron’s legacy at the Post – here’s more.

On the Ukraine front, Baron argues Trump should have been impeached for his alleged “quid pro quo.”  Of course, Trump would never have had to even raise the issue with Ukraine officials if Washington Post reporters had simply investigated Hunter Biden and Burisma as zealously as they have gone after Trump. 

And what about that Hunter Biden laptop story Marty that you never had the cojones to publish before the 2020 election?  No Pulitzer there for the Post joining the chorus of liars falsely discounting the laptop as Russian “disinformation.”

Baron also whines about the “costly” lawsuits Trump has filed to protect his reputation.  Hey Marty, my legal bill for an illegal prosecution by Biden’s Department of InJustice has already cost more than half a million bucks.  I’m still looking for that Post editorial in support of my standing up for the Constitutional separation of powers against a partisan witch hunt.  Not holding my breath.

Comically, Baron expresses surprise that, over the course of his tenure, Post readership steadily skewed more Democrat and Left.  While Baron blames Trump’s “vilification” of the Post and the fake news press for turning conservatives away, what really pisses us all off in Trump’s America is the excrement of anti-Trumpism the Amazon Post throws in our faces everyday. 

And answer me this smug Baron: Which came first – the Leftist press vilification of Trump or Trump’s vilification of the fake news press? 

Baron likewise whimpers about threats his muckrakers receive.  Hey Marty, walk a mile in the shoes of any high profile Trump administration official after all the negative Post coverage  We Trump alum are just as regularly heckled and hassled and face far more dangers out on the mean streets of Blue state America than any pampered Postie.

Constantly hovering over Baron’s memoir is the specter of Post owner, Jeff Bezos.  While Baron repeatedly insists the self-professed liberal Bezos is a man of integrity who never influenced the Post’s coverage, this sharply contradicts my own White House experience. 

As I recount in my White House memoir In Trump Time, I met Bezos at a political dinner where I informed him the White House was running a joint operation with Customs and Border Protection dubbed Operation Mega Flex.  We were inspecting thousands of additional packages from Communist China, most from E-commerce platforms like Amazon; and  I told Bezos the hit rates for counterfeit and contraband goods was well over ten percent – including deadly counterfeits of drugs like Lipitor. 

The next day, Bezos’ promise to meet with me personally quickly devolved into a comic farce.  After I tried to arrange the meeting through Jay Carney -- an ex-Obama official who had walked through the DC swamp’s revolving for a cushy lobbyist job at Amazon – Bezos went on Instagram to deny he ever promised to do so.  So much for integrity Jeff – and Amazon remains the biggest purveyor of counterfeit Communist Chinese goods on the planet.

At the end of the day, Baron and Bezos used President Trump just like CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times – to boost ratings and the subscriber base.  Bashing Trump has been good business plain and simple; but Marty, THAT is not the business of good journalism.

I used to deliver the Washington Post in high school. Now I wouldn’t even use it as toilet paper.