Call me Captain America, Mr. Fake News

Can you believe it?

The media gave Trump an estimated 5 BILLION DOLLARS of free airtime in 2016.

They never once called out racism nor warned of consequences of a Trump Presidency given the fascist nature of his candidacy, from the very beginning where he called Mexicans rapists and criminals and through 2018 when he spread propaganda about an immigrant invasion.

There was Trump's rally in Florida where one supporter proposed shooting immigrants as a way to stop the invasion.

Greenville, NC, there was Trump's call to excommunicate women and POC in Congress. Poison.

Hate speech has no place in America yet American media gave it more free face time than Bernie Sanders could ever dream of.

They gave us Trump. They aired his hate and venom. They sat back and played the both sides game rather than protecting us from the potential fallout of putting a white supremacist on national TV - legitimizing him - normalizing him by interviewing surrogates allowed to make excuses unchallenged.

The media is part of the problem. None of us disagree on that and many of us think they're most of the problem.

Somewhere along the line we lost our free press. It became about entertainment, clicks, horse race, lazy journalism and outright cowardice.

So why the hell are three major news networks and C-SPAN planning to blackout Trump's rally in PA? Why 3 years later?

x None of the three cable networks or any of the three CSPAN stations are carrying Trump's speech in Pennsylvania Ã¢ÂÂ Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 13, 2019

I think one of our candidates has perfectly reasonable explanation if you read his epic takedown of Trump in a CNN online OP-ED, calling out the complicit media for enabling Trump, forcing media to rise up and act responsibly whenever a rogue, twisted, sick, militant President drives us further down the road to fascism. His words are dangerous. Beto makes the case.

x When a white terrorist drove more than 600 miles to hunt and kill Hispanic people in my hometown, he followed a path of vile inspiration that reaches from the darkest chapters of our history and runs directly to the White House today.



My CNN op-ed: https://t.co/8f2hVOo30p Ã¢ÂÂ Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) August 13, 2019

The seeds of terror we saw that August day are transmitted day and night on Fox News, the most watched cable news channel in the country. They are amplified by right-wing websites like Breitbart, and in messages forced onto local news broadcasts by Sinclair Media. They metastasize on Facebook. And they filter up from grotesque online havens for white supremacists who preach intolerance and worship violence.

Beto traces the seeds of homegrown terrorism, from Trump's words, to news media and social media to the Darknet where white supremacists like the El Paso shooter feed off twisted ideology and find peer support for homicidal ideation.

Beto pulls no punches with all media. He calls out Fox and Breitbart but he's not gonna let mainstream media off the hook. Like all of us, he knows damn well they're part of the problem that gave us President dangerous to our safety and undoubtedly representing a national security threat, three years running now

He continues:

At a rally in Florida this past May, Trump asked how America could stop immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees from coming into the country. "Shoot them!" someone yelled back. As the crowd roared its approval, the President smiled and brushed the comment aside. Every media outlet that covers Trump's rallies uncritically is serving dangerous ends. This language of fear and intimidation is not, as some would have it, simply political theater; it actually changes our behavior. Counties that hosted a Trump rally in 2016 saw a 226% increase in hate crimes, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. And we've seen a rise in these kinds of crimes since Trump's been a candidate and in office.

Damn right mainstream media.

Stand up to fascism for the good of the country and suffocate this President. Choke off his hate at the mouth.

#BlackoutTrump