One topic that was sparely brought up in class here and there by multiple people was Donald Trump. And to me it seemed like most of those people were repeating the same talking points that resulted in the Democratic Party’s low approval rating and cost Hillary the election. The main ones being that he’s racist and doesn’t like Islam (Muslims themselves included). As far as who was the shinier turd within that final stretch it was Donald Trump. American mainstream media, social media included, regularly and actively censored positive Trump coverage and ignored all negative Hillary coverage. Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks in 2006, during the presidential race said “…there was a deliberate attempt to ignore negative stories about Hillary Clinton…” (Engineer, 2017).
The level of trust Americans have towards the mainstream media has dropped 23% for independents and 27% for Republicans from 1997 to 2015. Across age brackets, people 50+ trust the mainstream media 12% more than those aged 18-49 year old going into 2015; a major shift from 2001 where 18-49 year old trusted the media 5% more than those 50+. 2011 is when this age demographic shift market Started to happen (Gallup, 2016).
During the presidential debate Hillary Clinton was swamped with controversies, which really did not help her case. She never should have been a candidate in the first place considering her allegedly shady past of letting rapist go free, even though she herself was convinced he was guilty (Nathan’s, 2017). The better candidate would have been Bernie Sanders if the Democrats wanted to bag a clear victory. On the other hand Donald Trump is solidly fulfilling some of his easier promises despite media and social media backlash against him (Information, 2017). The funny thing is that this pattern of the Democrats losing an election to Republicans always happens when there is great turmoil in the world and/or the working class is sufficiently ignored by the ruling party, consistently after 36 years of uncontested rule (“Making Light: Electoral history, pattern-making, and meaning”, 2008).
References:
Engineer, C. (2017). Home. World. Retrieved from
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/750019/Julian-Assange-media-bias-wikileaks-Hillary-Clinton
Gallup, I. (2016). Americans’ trust in mass media sinks to new low. Retrieved 3 February 2017, from
http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx%C4%87
Nathans, I. (2017). Clinton’s 1975 rape case. Retrieved 3 February 2017, from http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/clintons-1975-rape-case/
Information, C. (2017). Trump making good on campaign promises, Gingrich says. Retrieved 3 February 2017, from
http://dailysignal.com/2017/01/25/trump-already-making-good-on-campaign-promises-says-newt-gingrich/
Making Light: Electoral history, pattern-making, and meaning. (2008). Nielsenhayden.com. Retrieved 25 March 2017, from http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010722.html
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