I have alluded several times in this presidential campaign to the many weird and significant ways in which this spectacle mirrors the O.J. Simpson trial of the 1990s, which happened to take place during a time period when Donald Trump was apparently losing almost a billion dollars a year. The latest absurd charge by Trump and his supporters that he is a target of “liberal media bias” is yet another uncanny example of this phenomenon.

In short, Trump, a liberal con man to whom the news media has actually been quite kind, claiming that he is a victim of the very real problem of media bias, is almost exactly like Simpson laughably theorizing that he was framed by the LAPD because of racism. Both underlying issues are legitimate, but Trump and Simpson (who were friends, by the way) are literally the very last people on the planet who should be allowed to benefit by using the real suffering of others as a shield themselves from truthful criticism.

For the past several days, Trump and his sycophants, running out of excuses for a doomed campaign and desperately trying to distract from credible allegations of sexual abuse, have trotted out various conspiracy theories about how and why “the media” is out to destroy him. Mediaite’s Founder & Publisher Dan Abrams (who, it should be noted, came to fame for his reporting on the O.J. Simpson case) has rightly mocked this outrageous strategy, as has even Brit Hume of Fox News.

This topic of “liberal media bias” is one which I take particularly seriously because I have devoted an enormous amount of my life and career as a talk host, columnist, and documentary filmmaker to proving the case that vast majority of the news media is dangerously biased towards Democrats and liberal ideas (a case which gets even stronger literally every day). I have not only spent the time and effort in the trenches in defense of what I once perceived to be a just and critical cause, but I have the personal scars to show for it (unlike fake fighters against bias like the “conservative” “Media Research Center” which fundraises off of bad media coverage and wouldn’t exist if the problem ever really got solved).

To see Donald Trump absurdly try to use the excruciating work that me and many others in the conservative movement have done to educate voters about this insidious reality, for nothing but his own personal self-interest, is incredibly disheartening. For him to do so on behalf of a campaign with no legitimate chance to win, all to undermine the faith in our elections and help lay the groundwork for “Trump TV,” is flat-out disgraceful.

The reality is that the only reason that Trump is the GOP nominee is that the news media decided it was in their economic self-interest to give him two billion dollars in free airtime during the primaries. The only reason the coverage of him now is seemingly so harsh is that the news media now, in a general election, has both an economic and political self-interest to tell the horrible truth about who Trump really is. Just because it suddenly benefits their agenda to finally do their job, doesn’t mean that what they are belatedly reporting isn’t true or relevant.

In fact, I would argue that on several issues (his taxes, Trump University, Trump Mortgage, his ties to Russia/Putin, his ties to conspiracy nut-jobs, his breaking of the Cuba embargo, his use of Chinese steel at the expense of American workers, his shady dodging of the Vietnam draft, his lying about his academic credentials, the failure of his casinos, etc) the news media’s pathetically short attention span and routine incompetence has actually let Trump get off the mat on several occasions. The all-too-easily distracted news media has been in much the same situation with Trump that prosecutors were in the Simpson case: there is simply so much evidence that it is difficult to know which piece to place the greatest focus. The media is also paying for their past sins of bias because when you somehow turned a great guy like Mitt Romney into a false monster, it becomes very difficult to be taken seriously when you say, “No really, seriously, here comes the scariest creature we have ever seen!!”

Evaluating media coverage should not be done in some sort of vacuum where both candidates must automatically be criticized “equally.” Despite this obvious truth, the Trump forces have been crying that the media attention on the sex abuse claims has been completely out of proportion with the relatively merger mentions of the latest Wikileaks revelations.

At first glance, this argument may seem to have some merit. However, on further inspection, I defy anyone to tell me what has been learned recently from Wikileaks about Hillary Clinton herself which is remotely on par with the revelation that Trump is being accused of being a serial groper who likes to brag about grabbing “pussy” while in the process of doing job-related TV interviews, and then blatantly may have very well lied about it at a presidential debate. I have asked for an answer to this inquiry on both Twitter and Facebook several times and gotten nothing of substance in response.

Ironically, while there was lots of interesting smoke with regard to possible Clinton-related corruption, the only real fire I have seen has come in the form of further proof that most of the news media really is in the tank for her and the Democratic Party. To me, about the most interesting/scary thing about the most recent Wikileaks disclosures is that if they had been willing/able to strategically release this stuff during the primaries, we might all be seriously looking down the barrel of a Bernie Sanders presidency.

There is, of course, a humorous aspect to this important subject. Trump’s hypocrisy is so overt that it is now flat-out funny. He’s now claiming Saturday Night Live is part of the conspiracy to “rig” the election (months after enthusiastically hosting the show himself), and today he praised CNN’s polls on Twitter just days after using the same platform to claim they are at the epicenter of the plot to elect Hillary. (Not to mention his own wife today sat down for an interview on the network.)

The bottom line here is Trump’s complaints are not based in truth, but in desperation. He is saying whatever might sound good at the moment to his base of fanatical future subscribers to whatever media venture he will create after he loses. A venture which, surely, will do even more self-serving complaining about media bias.

The issue of liberal media bias deserves so much more than being used as a prop, but like nearly everything else in this wretched election, it has been corrupted by the forces of deceit and evil.

[image via Shutterstock]

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John Ziegler is a nationally-syndicated radio talk show host and documentary filmmaker. You can follow him on Twitter at @ZigManFreud or email him at [email protected]

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.