A Political Slut and a RINO

Mike Hosking is one of the very few media who dares ask Ardern the hard questions but this week he disgraced himself. He joined other media subversives selling their souls by airing political vendettas instead of presenting the facts.

Hosking fronted a very shoddy interview that spread Trump Derangement Syndrome, as if we needed more of that! But Hosking couldn’t resist an opportunity to stir up the murky waters of misinformation with a sensationalist guest.

This week Hosking introduced his anonymous guest as “Republican David from Washington” ostensibly with information to get us up to speed on the latest in the Trump-Biden race.

Imagine my surprise when David from Washington called Trump dishonest, corrupt and a liar with a bad work ethic. No examples of course, just the usual hysteria unsupported by facts, but tellingly no challenge from Mike Hosking who knew the public were preconditioned to accept such spurious claims.

Donald Trump worked tirelessly to bring unemployment down to a fifty year pre-COVID low, build up the military neglected by Obama, and get the economy humming again also pre-COVID.

It took 30 seconds to hunt down David from Washington’s identity. Hosking never admitted that David from Washington is Canadian-American journalist David Frum who writes for the Atlantic, well known for its anti-Trump stance.

Frum’s latest Atlantic article is titled “Everyone Knows It’s True” in support of  a media attack on Trump accusing him of despising the military after allegedly (two years ago) calling them “losers and suckers”. It’s hard to keep up but this military attack was surpassed by the latest attack this week that Trump “played down the virus”.

“Imagine a man who has lived in the public eye for half a century, supposedly one of the country’s leading business figures, and when in trouble he struggles to summon credible or trustworthy witnesses from outside the Fox Cinematic Universe. There’s just a gaping zero where goodness should be.”

Goodness (and kindness) is heavily overrated in politics. And by the way, as an occasional Fox News watcher I observe that Frum is not correct that Fox reporters are Trump supporters, Chris Wallace is certainly not.

Frum’s claims about Trump despising the military fall under “he said, she said” and anyway why would Trump spend billions beefing up the military if he despised them? And why is he awarding the “Medal of Honor to U.S. Army Sgt. Major Thomas Payne for conspicuous gallantry for his role in leading a dangerous night time raid in Iraq that freed 75 hostages”?

Another recent Atlantic contributor claimed, “Trump rejected the idea of the visit [to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018] because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day.” An incident that happened two years ago (and made headlines worldwide) suddenly turns up supported by “four [unnamed] people with firsthand accounts”? Little wonder the Atlantic is considered unreliable.

Frum was a speechwriter for George W Bush. Politics was, and still is, his bread and butter. Frum is a self-declared lifelong Republican who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. As if it’s not bad enough being a political slut, Frum is also a RINO, a Republican in name only. A fifth columnist.

Lifelong political allegiance makes my head spin. Certainly we see generations here who will vote for the Nats or Labour come hell or high water, but I can’t help thinking about Ardern’s exceedingly bad performance during her first term (hugs and empathy excepted). It appears that even if Ardern had a hotline to Xi Jinping or buried the father of her child in concrete under the house some people would still vote for Ardern and Labour regardless.

It turns out David from Washington has also written a book: Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020).

Leigh Sales interviewed Frum for the ABC about the motivation for his book. You won’t find a single fact or example of Trump’s corruption or lust for power in the transcript of the interview which is unjustified hatred personified. Classic TDS.

“…ordinarily, we use the word apocalypse to mean the end of the world, some terrible catastrophe, zombies attack but literally, an apocalypse is a revelation, a glimpse of the future.And that’s what I have tried to offer in Trumpocalypse – a glimpse of how the Trump presidency will likely to end and what is likely to come after.”

“We are having a pandemic, we are having an economic crisis and we have a president who has made clear he intends to use all kinds of means, legitimate, not legitimate, ruthless, legal, illegal, to hold on to power any way he can.”

Hosking used Frum to wind up the prevalent (media established) TDS. Hosking is usually one of the more reliable reporters, but not in this interview. If he stays this course he will go the way of the once illustrious John Campbell now scrambling around in media obscurity aka the murky burial ground for unreliable sensationalist journalists.

Hosking didn’t need to stoop to such shonky tricks. Frum could have been introduced for what he is: a political slut and a RINO and this would have been a fascinating interview.

Until this week I had thought better of Mike Hosking but it turns out that he is not big enough to resist the urge to indulge in the ever popular Trump bashing. He could have done so much better.

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