2020 has been a year unlike any other in living memory. Wildfires consumed Australia and the United States’ west coast, government reaction to a global pandemic dragged the world economy to its knees, the presidential election made everything — whether you liked it or not — political, and we mourned the tragic deaths of notable figures such as Kobe Bryant, Chadwick Boseman, and Alex Trebek.
While history will no doubt focus on the bigger and more obvious stories — such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump’s impeachment, George Floyd’s terrible death, and Joe Biden’s electoral victory — here is a list of subtle but impactful moments which we cannot forget if we ever hope to explain or understand the dumpster fire of a year that was 2020.
Fiery but mostly peaceful protests.
After the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, waves of protests gripped the streets of American cities. For months, crowds assembled to protest alleged widespread “police brutality” and “systemic racism.” Democrats rushed to profit politically, and the legacy media rallied to enable their strategy.
Unfortunately for the Left, one major thorn in the side of this plan was the fact that many protests were far from peaceful. Due to groups like Antifa and militant wings of Black Lives Matter, violent riots exploded across the country. Stores were looted, businesses destroyed, people were hurt or even killed. Admitting this reality, however, could damage the momentum Democrats hoped to ride to the election, and so the legacy media engaged in a shocking and unprecedented act of gas-lighting. What riots happening outside your door? They simply don’t exist!
Two moments best exemplify this appalling strategy. First, after parts of Kenosha, Wisconsin lay in ashes after violent riots, CNN amended their reporting in real-time, removing the problematic word “violent” from the screen.
CNN airs chyron reading "violent protests" for 15 seconds before changing to remove "violent" when reporting on Kenosha pic.twitter.com/GpDA0NmQVh
— Tristan Justice (@JusticeTristan) August 25, 2020
Second, another CNN cyron read “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting,” as the flames rose from burning buildings and cars in the background. Mostly peaceful flames, of course.
CNN reporter reports in front of a burning building in Kenosha with a chyron that reads “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting”
No, really
pic.twitter.com/VMUB3AdB3V— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 27, 2020
For Chris Cuomo, joking about Gov. Cuomo’s nostrils was more important than New York care home deaths.
One of the central players in the legacy media’s propaganda service for the Democratic party was CNN. Chris Cuomo, a supposedly objective anchor on the network, played a leading role in achieving this objective, particularly with his vapid and dishonest protection of his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
By all available metrics, under the leadership of Gov. Cuomo, New York has buckled under COVID-19, with New York reporting more deaths than any other state. You’d think, given this public information, that the media would question Gov. Cuomo’s performance?
Well, you’d be wrong. Despite enforcing policies which resulted in the deaths of thousands of care home residents — with “New York’s true nursing home death toll cloaked in secrecy” — the legacy media presented Cuomo as a hero. He even had time to write a book, titled “American Crisis. Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
This brings us back to CNN’s Chris Cuomo. The moment that perhaps best describes the legacy media’s complete disinterest in reality is when Chris Cuomo, instead of asking his brother why New York was descending into madness under his rule, preferred to joke about how large Gov. Cuomo’s nostrils were.
"Is it true that when you were having the test administered, you inhaled and the doctor’s finger went all the way up your nose and got stuck?"
CNN's Chris Cuomo pulls out massive cotton swab to tease brother Gov. Andrew Cuomo after live test https://t.co/BravZj8anz pic.twitter.com/kKbuJjiyOQ
— The Hill (@thehill) May 21, 2020
‘You ain’t black.’ Joe Biden says the quiet part out loud.
We have known for decades that the Democrats take the so-called “black vote” for granted. Until Joe Biden, however, such assumptions were limited to quiet whispers. Instead of stating that black identity was inescapably tied to the Democratic party, politicians running for office would instead subtly pander for votes. They would dine with Al Sharpton. They would visit inner cities. They would blame Democrat failures on Republicans, white people, or the legacy of slavery.
After the anti-police Left, in delightfully ironic fashion, selected the author of the 1994 Crime Bill and a former Attorney General who kept people in jail beyond their sentences, Joe Biden instead began to say the quiet part out loud when it came to racial issues. The moment which stands out his multiple racist gaffes — and the moment which best shows the Democrats’ true colors — was brought to us when Biden proclaimed that voters “ain’t black” if they hadn’t already decided to vote for him.
Make no mistake. This isn’t the clumsy — and racist — words of a confused politician. It’s a statement of a fundamental assumption made by the modern Democratic party.
Don’t worry. This isn’t racist, because he’s a Democrat. https://t.co/xtgT8ySPFh
— Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) May 22, 2020
In the Year of the Mask, Trump removes his in defiance.
The political reaction to COVID-19 has remained shockingly partisan throughout the year. The validity of positions regarding matters such as lockdowns, mask-wearing, vaccinations, social distancing, and experimental treatments were determined not by underlying evidence or logic, but by political party. The Democrats were the “party of science,” and the Republicans were the “deniers of science.”
Central to much of this theater of division was the most recognizable image of the era of COVID-19: the mask. Rather than a medical tool viewed — if used properly in certain situations — as an effective and simple way of reducing the risk of spread, it became a sign of loyalty to one of two absurd ideologies. Either you “believe in science,” and wear your mask at all times as a sign of both your intellect and patriotism, or you refuse to bow to the demands of authoritarianism or become a sheep to the demands of the intellectual elite. All rational arguments which exist in the middle, of course, were ignored.
One of the biggest stories relating to COVID-19 was when Trump tested positive and required brief medical treatment. Perhaps the most memorable moment was when he left the Walter Reed National Medical National Military Medical Center, returned to the White House and, while standing outside in front of the media, removed his mask. Regardless of what you thought of this decision, it was a defining moment in the “Year of the Mask.”
CLOSE-UP: President Trump takes off his mask upon his return to the White House as he posed for photos from the balcony above the South Lawn. https://t.co/5GmHZxDHu1 pic.twitter.com/EYa8wvVejY
— The Hill (@thehill) October 6, 2020
Y’all elitists are dumb!
One of the strongest messages from the Trump administration was that the legacy media is far from the objective bastions of truth they claim to be. His battles with “journalists” went viral on an almost daily basis, with the media congratulating themselves as activist heroes standing up to ‘big bad orange man.’
However, the brutal truth is that President Trump is right. The legacy media are a collection of biased coastal elitists who feel personally endowed with the power to twist reality in pursuit of any narrative they see fit.
No moment in 2020 demonstrated this more clearly than Don Lemon — again, an objective journalist for CNN — crumbling into childish fits of giggles when the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson brought his comedy routine to the news network.
Wilson referred to Trump’s base as “the credulous boomer rube demo,” who believe “Donald Trump is the smart one and y’all elitists are dumb.” In response, Lemon collapsed with laughter on his desk. Lemon and Wilson were joined by Wajahat Ali who was somehow the least amusing of the three, adding “You elitists with your geography and your maps and your spelling.”
America, this is what CNN thinks of you…
pic.twitter.com/puuVjRLlw1— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 28, 2020
Let the poor eat ice cream while I get a haircut.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of the most vocal Democrats on the subject of COVID-19, whether it was encouraging people to “come down to Chinatown” in San Francisco early in 2019 in a bid to characterize Trump’s caution as xenophobic, or endorsing widespread lockdowns in California when it was then decided that Trump had failed to be cautious enough.
What makes Nancy Pelosi a frustrating and oddly fascinating character is that she is under growing pressure from the radical members of her own party who see her obvious elitism as antithetical to the new “progressive” direction of the Democratic party.
Not only is Pelosi’s status as a multi-millionaire San Francisco elite unhelpful when radical winds are blowing, it hardly helps when, while thousands of Americans are struggling to survive under government imposed lockdowns, Pelosi appeared on late night television to show off her $24,000 freezers and gourmet ice cream, priced at $14 per pint.
After today, Small Business workers and employees aren’t going to get a paycheck to feed their families because of the Democrats.
But here’s a video Nancy Pelosi’s team put out of her showcasing a (very fancy) freezer full of ice cream and a house full of chocolate. pic.twitter.com/265mKC7q9v
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) April 15, 2020
Then, when businesses across the city were closed by government force, a maskless Nancy Pelosi was caught attending a hair salon. When criticized, she blamed the salon.
LEAKED VIDEO: Nancy Pelosi forces salon to open so she can get her hair done, despite ordinance ordering salons remain closedpic.twitter.com/jN7wtbdWwx
— The First (@TheFirstonTV) September 1, 2020
2020 has been dominated by elitist Democrats flouting their own rules. These two moments from the multi-millionaire Pelosi perfectly encapsulate this hypocritical disconnect.
It Was a Debate! Hahahahaha.
In just a few years, history will show that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris united smoothly in their shared quest for “historic justice,” or some such nonsense. Let’s not forget that during the Democratic primaries, before Harris’ campaign imploded like a dying star, the California Senator implied that Joe Biden was racist and that he was guilty of sexual assault. When Joe Biden inexplicably selected Harris as his running mate — again, someone who had accused him of being a racist rapist — the legacy media were happy to paper over these recent events.
One of the few media figures to even come close to asking Kamala Harris about her decision to endorse a man she had labeled as a racist rapist was Stephen Colbert. Her response — via her signature crackle — of “it was a debate!” earns a spot in this list because of her shameless embrace of open lies in pursuit of power.
1) If @StephenAtHome is the only one willing to ask these questions, the media is failing.
2) If you think “it was a debate” is a valid excuse to flip on fundamental principles like racism, you have no principles. #KamalaHarris pic.twitter.com/6nPmm7dGyh— Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) August 15, 2020
Ian Haworth is host of The Ian Haworth Show and The Truth in 60 Seconds. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.