Where the Twain Meet

When you closely observe the media, it is astonishing to discover how many very newsworthy stories both camps ignore.

1. Impeachment of Trump—every week, Tyrant Trump adds new acts to his “dangerous dictator” rap sheet. He is the most Impeachable president in American history by far. So why isn’t the media doing more reporting on impeachment, the only accountability mechanism he can’t control?

The New York Times has written over a dozen devastating editorials about Trump’s impeachable offenses, but hasn’t mentioned the “I” word or concluded with the Impeachment remedy.

The two large “No Kings” rallies of millions of people did not lead with or stress Impeachment. The independent press sometimes mentions it, but is not reporting the split between the Democratic Party leaders—Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries—who still want no mention of the “I” word and legislators like Rep. Jamie Raskin, who has said that “a shadow hearing” on Impeachment was a “good idea” before Jeffries shut him down.

Constitutional law scholars believe that, were the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the authors of our Constitution here today, NOT ONE would oppose impeaching and removing Trump from office. He is exactly the kind of “monarch” they revolted against and secured safeguards against by putting the Impeachment authority exclusively with Congress, not reviewable by the courts.

Today’s GOP legislators are acting disgracefully againsr the wisdom of the early patriots  by covering for Trump, who openly declares he “can do whatever he wants as President.” He is serially violating federal laws and our Constitution daily.  Trump has no reluctance to start undeclared wars, spend money illegally and not appropriated by Congress, and evilly plan the disruption of the November elections, which are exclusively conducted under state laws.

2. One of these undeclared wars is against the Palestinians in Gaza, where, as a co-belligerent with the Israeli genocider Netanyahu, over 600,000 Gaza civilians have been killed and additional people in the West Bank. The media knows full well that the Hamas self-serving count of nearly 75,000 deaths is a vast undercount. Hamas and Netanyahu want such an undercount for different reasons (See my March 5, 2024 column titled, “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza”). Bear in mind, Gaza’s original 2.3 million people are crowded in a geographical area no larger than Philadelphia—bombed and starved constantly since October 7, 2023, when the mysterious simultaneous collapse of Israel’s advanced multi-tiered border apparatus let Hamas et al. fighters into the country.

With Israel smashing totally defenseless civilian populations and infrastructure at will, blocking “food, water, medicine, fuel, electricity…” it is not surprising that a year ago, retired professor Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford in the UK, an explosives expert, estimated the TNT equivalent of the Biden/Trump bombs and missiles was equivalent to six Hiroshima atomic bombs.

No matter the available probative evidence put forward by casualty experts at universities, international agencies, and UN agencies, along with the State Department’s hidden information, none of the leading newspapers and magazines are investigating this major story. (The State Department is sitting on our nearly two-year-old Freedom of Information request.)

By comparison, more Palestinians in tiny Gaza have been killed by Israeli/American war crimes than U.S. soldiers and sailors killed by Hitler and Hirohito in World War II.

3. Six dutiful members of Congress—all veterans—warned soldiers not to obey illegal orders in November 2025, reflecting settled law. Trump said they should be executed and tried to indict them. The grand jury refused! Now, thousands of soldiers are compelled to obey the illegal bombing orders of the war-crazed, self-described Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Yet the valiant six lawmakers have remained silent. This story has been ignored.

4. The history of the U.S.’s recurring usurpations and violence against Iran, which has not invaded anyone in some 250 years, is only occasionally mentioned in U.S. print media. But the overthrow of its elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953 by the U.S.; the installation of the dictatorial, brutal Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for 26 years before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the allying with Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, causing 500,000 Iranian deaths; and the constant sabotage, with Israel, of Iranian experts and assets are not widely reported as explanations of Iran’s defensive counterattacks in the region.

Who started all this? Who is in whose backyard? Why aren’t the American people more forcefully told that Trump’s war of aggression is unconstitutional and violates federal criminal statutes, along with international treaties like the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions? Have no lessons been learned from the disastrous Bush/Cheney criminal invasion of Iraq, based on fabricated threats?

5. The feeble Democratic Party over recent decades, unable to landslide the worst anti-worker, anti-women, anti-consumer, anti-environment, pro-Wall Street, war-mongering GOP in history, has contracted out its campaigns and fundraising to corporate conflicted consulting firms. (See Ryan Grim’s 2021 Interceptarticle “The Democratic Party’s Consultant Factory.”)

I’ve urged proficient reporters like Reed Epstein and Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times to look into how this disabling abdication has cut off the two historic roots of the Party’s past electoral successes—progressive labor unions and civic organizations. They sounded interested, but like other reporters in both mainstream and independent media, there was no follow-up.

6. Trump has manifested what many psychologists have described as a “dangerously unstable personality” (See Bandy Lee’s manifesto from 2017 titled, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President”), which, given his dictatorial behavior and fragile egomania, spells great danger for the American people and the world. Aside from the symptoms of vain-gloriousity, such as demanding his name be plastered everywhere or musing about deserving the Congressional Medal of Honor during his wandering State of the Union speech (see my column from last week titled, “The Delusional State of Führer Trump’s Speech”), his worsening mental condition is justifying 25th Amendment action.

Consider this mental instability launching America into another quicksand war in the Middle East, contrary to his daily campaign promises to his MAGA base. In early January, Trump sent a message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre that “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS [falsehoods], I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace…” What?

In other words, the pouting, powerful mental case, Dangerous Donald, didn’t get his Peace Prize, so he will get his revenge by becoming a warfare president. Trump’s state of clinical insanity does not surprise reporters and editors. However, they are reluctant to expose his mental illness that, for example, can engulf the world in wars and trigger his use of the Insurrection Act, to seize voting machines, suppress voters, and negate enough Congressional elections that Republicans in Congress are likely to lose.

7. Led by the New York Times, refusing to cover the shocking automatic rebate of New York State’s stock transaction (sales) tax since 1981, now totaling many tens of billions of dollars, the media continues to sideline this stunning story. Even a story about Mayor Mamdani strangely not supporting a bill pending in the state legislature to end this rebate of at least $50 million a day to the brokers (about a third of the lawmakers have signed on—see https://greedvsneed.org/) has not sparked their reportorial curiosity.

I’ve spoken recently to five New York Times reporters who thought it was a good story but then went dark. (The last two were Nick Fandos and Emma Goldberg). The bill in Albany even allocates the money for mass transit, healthcare, education, and the environment—just what Mamdani said he needed funding for during his campaign and present incumbency.

These are just some examples of an all-sides media blackout that can be both as predictable as it is puzzling, depending on the newspaper or magazine or program. (There are few exceptions.) Whether it is lassitude, fearing to be first in a controversial subject, ideology, bigotry, or advertiser pressure, the result is the same. The people’s right to know is being seriously shortchanged.

These aforementioned topics are on our Reporters Alert website, created in 2021 to partially deal with reporters not returning calls to get important leads.

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