You knew this would happen, right? The media can’t resist the urge to tie anything negative to Trump directly or by extension. The ridiculous thing about this is that it’s a blatant nothing burger. The whole point is to plant an association in people’s minds.

To make matters worse, when the AP writes a story like this, it goes out to hundreds, possibly thousands of smaller news outlets. This is taken from the Middletown Press in Connecticut:

APNewsBreak: Steve Bannon had ties to Harvey Weinstein The multiplying tentacles of the Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal have touched a former president, a former presidential candidate and now a former presidential adviser. Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House strategist and current head of Breitbart News, is the latest politico touched by the scandal. Bannon, whose website has hammered Democrats for accepting Weinstein’s political donations, himself profited off a relationship with the movie mogul, in an ill-fated joint venture more than a decade ago. Bannon served as chairman of a small company that distributed DVDs and home videos, and went into business in 2005 with The Weinstein Co., led by Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob. The Weinsteins became 70 percent owners of the now defunct venture, Genius Products. The connection highlights the breadth of a scandal that has tainted an array of leading Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who were friendly with Weinstein and accepted his campaign donations.

Bannon didn’t carouse with Weinstein, he didn’t accept political donations from him like Hillary. Yet the AP suggests he’s as connected as Democrats who really did benefit from their connections to the disgraced mogul.

This is what the AP story is really about:

The ties to Weinstein open Bannon up to charges of hypocrisy given Breitbart’s intense focus on the scandal and its political fallout. In recent days the site has featured a blog with live updates on the story; headlines calling out Obama, Clinton and top Democrats for their ties to the producer; and stories attacking other news outlets for failing to cover the scandal with the same ferocity as Breitbart.

John Hinderaker of Powerline made an excellent point about this:

The Associated Press runs interference for the Democratic Party every day. At the moment, the Harvey Weinstein scandal is hurting the Democrats badly. Weinstein was a major force in the party, as he was in Hollywood. As an important donor to, and ostensible close friend of, Democratic politicians including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the revelation that his adult life has been one long crime spree was, for the Democrats, a major embarrassment… One might argue that Steve Bannon was a hypocrite if he knew that Harvey Weinstein was a felonious pig and nevertheless accepted campaign contributions from him and praised his character. But Bannon didn’t do those things. Bannon entered into an arms-length business transaction that ended in bankruptcy. And the AP gives us no reason to think that Bannon, anything but a Hollywood insider, was aware of the Democratic donor’s criminal proclivities. If Bannon had known about them, it presumably would have been Breitbart.com rather than the New York Times that broke the scoop. What is the point of a story like this one by the AP? There is no point, except to distract readers from the significance of the Weinstein scandal, which relates entirely to a Democratic Party industry and to Democratic Party politicians, by randomly associating a Republican with the disgraced sex criminal.

Does the Associated Press believe people don’t see this for what it really is?



