I could not believe my eyes and ears tonight when Lester Holt and NBC switched away from the impeachment vote coverage and started showing Trump’s rally in Michigan. AARRGHGHG!!! Every Trump rally is the same raucous, vulgar, dishonest and hateful event as the last raucous, vulgar, dishonest and hateful rally. Hey, NBC and other media, this is not news anymore. In 2016, you never provided nearly as much coverage to Trump’s opponents’ rallies as you did to his. He got tons of free air time from you. And it was the same thing over...and over...and over…
So on this historic night, what did you do, NBC? You cut to a Trump rally! Did it look or sound any different from the hundreds of other Trump rallies you’ve covered? No. Really, if you didn’t have any more to say about the impeachment vote, you should have wrapped up your coverage. But no, you just had to have a peak at him. You just can’t quit him.
So I emailed NBC news:
I am appalled that you chose to show Donald Trump’s Michigan campaign rally as a backdrop to the historic impeachment vote tonight. In 2016, Trump garnished hours of free media coverage because the press persisted in covering his rallies and all but ignored his opponents' rallies. The gravitas of an impeachment vote should not have been cheapened by a raucous and vulgar campaign rally. Trump rallies are always raucous and vulgar. They no longer qualify as “news,” but rather as re-creations of the same old histrionic Trump rants. On the other hand, this historic vote deserved your full attention as actual breaking news. I hope that as the impeachment process continues, and Trump ramps up his hateful, false, and vulgar rhetoric, you choose more wisely when deciding what to put on the air.
Seriously, I do not want to spend another campaign season watching non-stop coverage of Trump hate rallies, while the media ignores other candidates’ rallies. He is playing them as the fools they are for giving him hours and hours of free air time. They need to hear from us about this. Every time they show one of his rallies LIVE as “news,” we need to remind them that they are no longer news; they are the same thing over….and...over...and….over. If, remarkably, something newsworthy happens at one of his rallies, they can do what they do with other candidates: report on it later. That’s what real news people would do.