Questions the Media Needs To Ask Trump Daily

One of the most maddening (to me and others) since Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 is the abject failure of most of the main stream media to adequately expose Trump for what and who he is and to engage in the fantasy that he was/is a normal candidate. As the media engaged in an orgy over Hillary Clinton's emails Trump's misogyny, never ending lies, grifting and overall unfitness for office were either ignored or under reported.  Fast forward to 2024 and disturbingly, too much of the media seemingly has learned nothing and continues to engage in false equivalency and focus on polls to engender a so-called "horse race."  Meanwhile, Trump continues to be free from being being faced with hard questions and the January 6th insurrection goes unmentioned.  A column in the Washington Post looks at these failures of the media and the questions that should be asked of Trump on a daily basis in order to expose the threat he poses to the nation, both domestically and in the international context.  Here are column highlights:

Are we in La La Land? If I didn’t know better, I might conclude that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, in which rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election, was merely the act of exuberant “patriots” voicing their displeasure with Joe Biden’s victory — and that Donald Trump had nothing to do with it. What else to think, based on the media’s treatment of the twice-impeached former president and felon and his campaign to return to the White House?

Trump is being covered by the press as if Jan. 6 were old news.

Here we are, back to horse-race journalism and breathless pursuit of polls and other campaign nuggets designed to keep audiences glued to our websites, networks and newspapers — with little attention paid to the character, records of service and moral fitness of candidates who seek the highest offices in the land. To wit: Republicans Trump and JD Vance, and Democrats Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Fortunately, and for the sake of our democracy and Constitution, special counsel Jack Smith is not going to let Trump slide away from his attempt to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory. Yes, the ultraconservative Supreme Court majority (cobbled together by Trump himself during his time in office) gave Trump a get-out-of-jail-free card with its ruling granting presidents broad immunity for official acts — a contrived loophole that carefully safeguards several of his actions to overturn the will of the voters.

But the ruling might have left Smith with room to run, including where the allegations concern Trump’s behavior during the ransacking and riot at the Capitol. . . . The new indictment, redesigned to fit under the umbrella of the court’s suspect ruling, still contains enough facts to show that Trump was determined to hold on to the reins of power. Namely, evidence revealing that Trump spread lies about fraud in the election, that he sowed distrust of the results and that he targeted a bedrock U.S. government function: collecting, counting and certifying the votes of the electoral college.

And here, in 2024, we have Trump campaigning in full misogyny, with lewd references to Harris, without being pressed for answers about behavior that unleashed the worst assault on the seat of the federal government since the War of 1812.

Imagine a president singling out his own vice president for the scorn of a bloodthirsty mob and sitting back as Secret Service agents scrambled to protect him and his family. Imagine a president receiving reports of members of Congress fleeing the Capitol for their lives and not immediately sending reinforcements to the Hill. Imagine a president leaving it to a D.C. mayor and her police force to rescue U.S. Capitol Police.

Why would a president ignore findings by his own Justice Department that there was no evidence of significant election fraud, then turn to an ad hoc crew of co-conspirators to try to undo what American voters had done?

Those questions should hound Trump on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, Trump’s New Jersey golf club is hosting a fundraiser for families of the defendants charged in the attack on the Capitol. Felons — dubbed “patriots” by Trump — whose sentences he has promised to commute if he’s returned to the White House.

Now is the time — not on Election Day, but before voters head to the polls on Nov. 5 — to find out whether Trump will accept the 2024 presidential election results.

We know all too well what happened before.

It was a nightmare that I forecast in a 2021 New Year’s Day column.

Trump, I observed at the time, was desperately scheming to find new ways to alter the 2020 outcome. He had ignored the more than 90 state and federal judges who rejected challenges to the election because there was no evidence to support their claims of fraud. He had scraped together a cult of Republican lawmakers to lodge objections to interrupt congressional certification of the electoral college.

“Imagine Congress assembling to count electoral college votes in the midst of Trump-encouraged chaos,” I wrote. “Nothing would please Trump die-hards more than the eruption of an all-out conflagration around Capitol Hill.” And I warned, “Trump isn’t calling his followers to Washington for sport. Or to make lawmakers nervous. Or to dominate the news cycle. Trump wants to overturn the 2020 election and take the presidential oath on Jan. 20.” Thank goodness Capitol and D.C. police thwarted the scheme.

America does not deserve a repeat of that Trump performance.

The nation needs to know in advance whether, this time around, Donald Trump is committed to accepting the 2024 results. He should be asked that whenever he shows his face in public.

Every. Single. Time. This isn’t La La Land. We, the media and the public, need answers.