James Fallows listens to talk radio so you don’t have to:
Spent 8hrs today in car, listening to AM talk radio.
All the rhetorical energy was defending (a) Russia (b) Assange, as below
Jeesh https://t.co/hjGcAbmE4q— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) January 5, 2017
This is scary. Not because these folks are defending Putin and Assange—plenty of people do that—but because these are precisely the people who were the most outraged by Putin and Assange as recently as last year. Now they’ve turned on a dime, and for one reason: because Donald Trump told them to.
Twenty years ago, a Washington Post reporter wrote that followers of television evangelists were “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.” The blowback was huge and immediate and the Post apologized the next day. To this day, conservatives quote these words as evidence that the mainstream press has it in for conservatives.
But what else explains what’s happening now? Donald Trump has essentially commanded his followers to defend Putin and Assange, and with barely a whimper they’ve complied. And when the press starts to point out what’s going on, we get this:
The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange – wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017
“It is for the people.” Everything is “for the people.”
