Imagine this scenario: It’s 2020, and a sitting Republican congressman has announced a primary challenge to President Donald Trump. What’s more, he has registered 16 percent support in a poll of New Hampshire voters just 12 days before that state’s primary. Quite clearly, the story of his candidacy would be blanketing the airwaves.
The same is not the case when it comes to the Democratic primary. Democratic Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips — who is waging a primacy challenge against President Joe Biden and who indeed registered 16 percent support in a New Hampshire poll released yesterday by Emerson — is being all but ignored by the media this election cycle.
MSNBC’s only reported coverage of Phillips was a segment in which host Alex Wagner derisively commented that “literally zero voters showed up” at one of his recent campaign stops. CNN has covered Phillips a few times more, as Phillips says he has made five appearances on the network. But the general attitude from all mainstream outlets — including the New York Times and the Washington Post — is silence.
With the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary fast approaching, Phillips has decided to go public with his ire over the networks’ seeming subservience to the Biden administration. In an interview published today with Politico, Phillips said, “I’m appalled… I’m disappointed. I’m disgusted that professionals who ostensibly have committed their entire careers to sharing truth and to providing facts and to sharing information with American voters … are fundamentally avoiding their responsibilities.”
Phillips points the blame for all of this squarely at the Biden administration, whom he claims is purposefully pressuring the media into silence.
“I do know of specific cases where representatives of the Biden campaign have been very clear to others about trying to not attend events of mine, to not support me, and to not platform me,” Phillips told Politico reporter Michael Schaffer. “It is almost antithetical to democratic principles, which include debate, deliberation and ultimately compromise.”
When Schaffer reached out to Biden’s campaign for comment, a spokesman simply responded, “LOL.” Incidentally, the spokesman who gave such a response was TJ Ducklo, who stole the spotlight at the beginning of Biden’s presidency after he viciously berated a female reporter who asked him for comment on the fact that he was engaged in a romantic relationship with a reporter from Axios who was assigned to cover the Biden administration. “I will destroy you,” Ducklo had told the journalist.
With staffers like that, maybe Dean Phillips is speaking the truth when he claims the Biden administration has colluded with mainstream and left-leaning outlets to silence his campaign.
But even if Phillips’ claim that the Biden campaign is actively undermining his campaign through pressuring the media is unfounded, the media’s dismissal of his campaign raises a major concern. It suggests that the media is treating the president of the United States with kid gloves so as to preserve its favorable relationship with those in power and assure that its preferred ideology triumphs.
This article is an excerpt from The American Spectator’s Spectator P.M. newsletter. Subscribe today to read future letters from our staff!
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