On Tuesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about the media’s plan to get the American people on board with impeachment. Video and partial transcript below:
The MRC, the Media Research Council, they do that wonderful Newsbusters site that I like so much. They write this:
With virtually no chance Senate Republicans will vote to remove President Trump from office, House Democrats’ drive for impeachment is more likely aimed at creating a deluge of negative daily headlines hoping to cripple Trump going into next year’s election. If that is indeed Democrats’ goal, then the three broadcast networks are doing everything they can to help achieve this partisan objective.
Overwhelmingly negative: MRC analysts have reviewed all coverage of President Trump in his and his administration on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts since 2017. Following the beginning of the impeachment inquiry on September 24, this coverage has been even more hostile than normal: Out of 684 evaluative comments included in these broadcasts, a whopping 96 percent have been negative, vs. a meager four percent that have been positive.
All About Impeachment: TV’s fascination with Democrats’ impeachment push has crowded out nearly all other news about the administration. During the six weeks since Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the start of the inquiry (September 24 through November 5), the ABC, CBS, andNBC evening newscasts churned out 398 minutes of coverage to the Ukraine scandal, or more than three-fifths of all administration news during this period (645 minutes).
Here’s the thing, so now we know everything is negative, and Trump’s successes vanish. This is the important thing: If Trump is a success, which he so often is, or if the Democrats turned out to be lying, which they so often are, that just disappears.
Remember when Adam Schiff was going to bring the whistleblower in to testify and then suddenly it turned out that the whistleblower had arranged everything with Schiff before they got started? Schiff realized, [paraphrased] “Oh, if I bring him in to testify, they can ask questions of him,” [and] the story does just disappears.
So now impeachment starts tomorrow, the public hearings start tomorrow. Now, this is what they’re talking about — remember I called it “Impeachment: The Movie,” because all they’re talking about is how can we convince people, and the press is basically piling on. The press is working with Adam Schiff, [thinking] “How can we shoot this movie, how can we shoot this story so it really affects voters?”
By the way, they know now, they’re starting to realize, it’s not going to happen. It’s just not going to happen because they haven’t got anything, but here — just to show you because they do it openly, it’s amazing — here is Brian Stelter with Ana Cabrera on CNN, wondering how they can shoot this movie, how they can tell this story, so you give a rat’s what Donald Trump did in regards to Ukraine.
CABRERA: How important is this week in terms of getting the American people invested and interested early on?
STELTER: Well, this is the first Internet impeachment, right? When you were at the Clinton White House, Joe, the Internet was mostly a text media, most people weren’t really online yet, there were no smartphones. So this is the first time we’re gonna have an impeachment process that is clipped and condensed and distorted and remixed in all of these ways and shared on social media. The reality is most people will not watch live, although many CNN viewers will, most people end up watching clips and then hearing about it later in the day as it’s being digested, whatever is said at the hearings.
I think that’s really important. You know, both Democrats and Republicans are going to be trying to control that messaging war. I also think episode one, so to speak, matters a lot. And I hate to say that because we’re talking about basic democracy at risk here, but from a television perspective, Democrats have to come out strong in that first episode. For the same reason that when we’re watching something on Netflix or listening to a podcast, we only choose to keep listening if we’re interested in episode one. So I think the Democrats know that, but I’ll be interested to see what kind of show they put on on Wednesday morning trying to hook people.
Even Soledad O’Brien, who used to work at CNN, said that was shameful, that Brian Stelter should be ashamed of himself. But if I may ask you, keep these three things in your head, okay. Three things in your head: Overwhelmingly negative coverage, I mean so negative, it’s absurd. Like 94% — what was it, 96% — unbelievably negative coverage. [Two], the past disappears when it’s pro-Trump, which has been pretty consistently pro-Trump. We’re at peace where the economy is doing well, people have jobs, so things are actually going pretty well.
So the past vanishes, that is number two, and number three: It’s a show being organized between Adam Schiff and the press, they are putting on a show meant to convince you that this is an important thing. As I’ve said again and again, I think Donald Trump is 100% right on this. It’s nonsense, it is a cover-up, it is absolute nonsense.
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