



The latest news about Michael Avenatti — he is charged with defrauding porn actress Stormy Daniels — is a further illustration of the mainstream media’s bias against President Donald Trump in their failure to ask critical questions of Avenatti early into his meteoric national media rise as he tried to drum up speculative allegations against the president.

The Washington Free Beacon put together a montage of mainstream media figures praising Avenatti, heralding him as a great savior, all before Avenatti’s fall from grace — everything from his alleged attempts to extort Nike to an arrest for domestic abuse allegations and charges of wire and bank fraud.

Avenatti was widely booked across MSNBC, CNN and other mainstream media programming, amounting to millions of dollars in free media airtime. The Free Beacon last year “analyzed 108 appearances by Avenatti on MSNBC and CNN over a 64-day period from March 7 to May 10. To calculate his earned media time, the Free Beacon multiplied the length of his appearances on a program by its ‘National Publicity Value’ determination from media monitoring site TVEyes.com.

The total came out to $174,631,598.07 from at least 65 CNN appearances and 43 MSNBC appearances. Avenatti’s favorite shows include CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360’ (at least 20 interviews), MSNBC’s ‘The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell’ (14), CNN’s ‘New Day’ (12), CNN’s ‘Tonight with Don Lemon’ (eight), and MSNBC’s ‘Deadline White House’ (seven).”

The Free Beacon video gives the unquestioning praise of Avenatti:

“He’s Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,” HBO’s Bill Maher stated in his opening monologue. “You are something of a folk hero,” Maher told Avenatti in person on his show. “We think you guys are the tip of the spear that is going to take down Donald Trump.” “He’s out there saving the country,” ABC’s Joy Behar said of Avenatti. “The only person, right here, Donald Trump fears more than Robert Mueller.”

“Jon Meacham says he may be the savior of the republic,” Eddie Glaude said glowingly on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“I am just dying to hear what you think,” MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace told Avenatti on the air.

“These people all like you,” Stephen Colbert gushed to Avenatti.

“No one has talked tougher directly to Donald Trump on TV than Michael Avenatti, and Donald Trump is afraid to mention his name,” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said. “Donald Trump is terrified of Michael Avenatti.”