When "Access" Is More Important than Truth.

Why else would CBS News hire Mick Mulvaney, a Trump thug with a history of lying and attacking the press?

On 28 February 2020, Trump’s “acting” White House Chief of Staff was interviewed on stage at CPAC by right-wing nutjob and incompetent hack Stephen Moore who asked Mulvaney to respond to what “Fake News CNN and MSNBC” were saying about Trump’s mishandling of America’s coronavirus response.

The allegation, according to Moore, was that Trump was “asleep at the switch,” leaving America completely unprepared for a pandemic that, as we now know, would soon be killing tens of thousands of Americans a month.

Mulvaney pushed back at the narrative that the Trump Administration was “scrambling,” “unprepared” and “had no idea what was going on.”

As C-SPAN reported on 28 February 2020: Mulvaney accused the press of ignoring the issue and using it to try to bring down the president, calling it their “hoax of the day.”

(See also: The 29 February 2020 of this newsletter: Not a Hoax, Folks.)

At CPAC, Mulvaney insisted the Trump Administration was “way ahead” of the virus. He told the audience they should be “extraordinarily proud of” the Trump response, which, in his telling, consisted of “extraordinary” restrictions on travel from China that would “prevent a further outbreak in this country.”

Amid rising panic that Trump was, indeed, asleep the switch (we later found out what he actually did in February 2020), Mulvaney said the best thing he could do to “calm the markets” would be to “tell people to turn their televisions off for 24 hours.”

“This is not Ebola,” Mulvaney reassured the crowd, adding: “This is something we know how to deal with… We are the best country in the world prepared to do this. We have been preparing to do this for years.”

Stephen Moore ended the segment by saying: “Thank God that we don’t have a socialized healthcare system in the United States.”

The crowd cheered.

Two years later, one million Americans are dead.

Mulvaney is a Trump Thug with a History of Lying, Abusing the Free Press and Being Flat-Out Wrong

Mulvaney is exactly the kind of seedy political opportunist that has infected the GOP in the Trump era. He went from calling Trump a “terrible human being” and an awful role model for his sons in 2016 to becoming the ultimate suckup and apologist for the most criminal President America has ever seen.

As a political thug, Mulvaney has a slightly more polished presentation than, say, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan.

But like Jordan, who turned a blind eye to the frequent raping and rampant sexual abuse of his students at Ohio State, Mulvaney has ignored or actively covered up numerous crimes against America, many of which have still gone unpunished.

Mulvaney not only hid the truth from America about Trump’s botched Covid-19 response. He also defended Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, which led to Trump’s first impeachment. And, as Kurt Bardella detailed in The Los Angeles Times, Mulvaney also helped Trump attack the foundations of American democracy:

• On Mulvaney’s watch, the White House took a wrecking ball to checks and balances by vowing to defy all congressional subpoenas.
• On Mulvaney’s watch, the Trump administration launched an unconstitutional attack against the process to conduct a fair census.
• On Mulvaney’s watch, at least 25 administration officials received security clearances that should not have been granted based on the recommendations of intelligence officials.

Bardella’s Op-Ed calls CBS News’s decision to give Mick Mulvaney a paid contributor gig “an act of journalistic malpractice.”

“Democracy doesn’t die in darkness,” Bardella writes. “It dies because of stuff like this.”

Why on earth would CBS News—“The House that Cronkite Built”—hire someone as devious and untrustworthy as Mick Mulvaney?

In a word, access. As Jeremy Barr reveals in The Washington Post:

“Getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms,” CBS News’s co-president Neeraj Khemlani told the staff of the network’s morning show (earlier this month), according to a recording of his comments obtained by The Washington Post. “A lot of the people that we’re bringing in are helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation.”

There was a mini-scandal at CBS News back in 2016 when former CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said that Trump’s candidacy “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Relishing the ratings and advertising boom Trump was bringing, Moonves added: “I’ve never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

Unlike Trump, Moonves later paid a price for his years as a sexual harasser, and resigned from CBS in 2018.

But, despite his absence, the management at CBS News is continuing to let “The House that Cronkite Built” fall into disrepair.

It may not be good for America, but CBS News has decided that access is more important than truth.

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