The conviction of Michael Avenatti on charges of extortion is only the beginning of a number of suits brought against the disgraced former Lawyer To The Porn Stars. His downfall has been swift and one of the delicious side-effects has been watching the once-fawning media squirm as a result.
Over the weekend CNN’s Oliver Darcy attempted to deflect responsibility, trying to state that calling Avenatti a ”Media Darling” what something manufactured by Fox News. Oh Oliver…sorry, but we have the receipts.
On his Sunday program of Reliable Sources Darcy’s mentor, Brian Stelter, dared broach the subject of whether they had been too stupid in lending so much support behind Avenatti. Now, before heaping praise on Tater for this rare burst of self-actualization he brought on a pair of sycophants from the Daily Beast, Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng.
.@brianstelter asked @lachlan if it was stupid on Stelter's part to suggest Michael Avenatti could be a serious presidential candidate: pic.twitter.com/xePDmspPLe
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) February 16, 2020
Little surprise Stelter, and the media in general, would be excused away from responsibility as a result of it all being the fault of one man — Donald Trump. Somehow the president is so villainous that he can direct the very actions of those who oppose him!
What hot garbage.
Markay tries to insist that the president has managed to ”Trumpify his opposition as well.” It’s not Brian’s fault that he and his network will just throw full support behind ANY person who speaks up against Trump! Trump is making them do that!!!
But as Markay continues with his word-salad excuse-making he unravels his claims at the same time, when he said ”This was a guy who in many ways was very similar to Trump.” Fine, if that were the case, then it means that Avenatti was just as detestable as the man they collectively detest, and therefore these wizened journalists should have recognized those qualities. Avenatti should have been shunned in the same fashion.
So no, it was not that they were duped by the Bad Orange Man, they were in a fog of ”Orange Man Bad”, of their own creation. This is something Suebsaeng gives voice to in this segment. ”It would have been weird at that time…to not take him seriously, at least in the form of someone who was getting in the President’s head.”
And THAT was the entire rationale, as we have recognized all along. The press was strictly concerned with going after the president, and they tossed objectivity overboard in order to push their very biased anti-Trump narrative, and since Michael Avenatti was explicitly anti-Trump then there was no reason to look at the man with any caution.
What is beautiful with this discussion is that Brian Stelter thought he was creating for himself an escape route away from responsibility over Avenatti — instead what he and his guests managed was proving that they have been partisan activists regarding the president all this time.
