First Draft: AOC Under (Unfair?) Attack
Prem on how reporters and Republicans want to undermine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's big foreign policy event, Jesse Jackson's death, and more fallout from the Epstein files.
🚨Breaking: US civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson died this morning at the age of 84. Jackson, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination twice, was the first Black candidate to win a major party primary or caucus and the first prominent national Democrat to stand with Palestinians.
Good morning! Prem here, wishing you all many, many things: Happy and loving Valentine’s Day weekend! Ramadan Mubarak! Happy Lunar New Year! Laissez les bons temps rouler (Happy Mardi Gras)!
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ the media is already showing that, despite its credulous coverage over the past year of fascism, it does still know how to scrutinize politicians but only if they’re progressive, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Also – a Republican lawmaker distances himself from Trump’s policy architect Stephen Miller, John Fetterman tells an egregious lie (shock! horror!), and more egregious Islamophobia from the repulsive Rep. Randy Fine. Read on!
Attacking AOC While ‘Sanewashing’ Trump
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited Germany this week for the Munich Security Conference, Europe’s largest gathering of international leaders and diplomats. While the visit has fueled speculation about whether one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party is seeking the highest office in the land, she herself argues the focus on her visit as a sort of campaign stop is “out of touch” and obscures why she was there at all: to advocate for a working-class politics that stymies the spread of far-right fascism.
In any case, corporate-owned legacy media outlets are already gearing up to treat her, and the left, with the type of journalistic scrutiny they never give conservatives or, for that matter, centrists.
The New York Times wrote that her visit “demonstrated the relative foreign policy inexperience of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who has made a few overseas trips since taking office but does not sit on any House committees devoted primarily to world affairs,” pointing out moments where she verbally stumbled, including when she was asked whether the US should send troops to defend Taiwan if China invaded.
“I think that, uh, this is such a, a – you know, I think that – this is a, um – this is of course, a, uh, a very longstanding, um, policy of the United States,” the Times quoted her, before adding that she said the country should seek to avoid reaching that point with China in the first place.
First off, I want to say that it’s not our job as journalists to sanitize or “sanewash” politicians’ quotes or actions. It was a rough moment for Ocasio-Cortez in Munich, albeit on a tough question – but one that she, like any capable politician, ought to be able to answer and have a clear position on, no less if she chooses to run for higher office. But it’s always a choice when journalists decide to clean up quotes – or not. It’s always revealing which politicians have “uh” or “um” removed from their documented public utterances – and which don’t.
For instance, how often does the mainstream media let Donald Trump’s words speak for themselves?