Suggestion from the 2018 State of the Union

Donald Trump is on trial right now in New York City, facing criminal charges for “business fraud.” However, that term is really the last step that began with (1) having adulterous affairs (2) with porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal (3) just months after Trump’s wife Melania gave birth to son Barron, then (4) covering up the Daniels affair by paying $130,000 in “hush money” to Daniels (5) through Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, as well as (6) involving the Trump-friendly National Enquirer in paying $150,000 to McDougal to kill the story of her affair with Trump, and (7) paying off a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child Trump allegedly fathered out of wedlock. According to the New York prosecutors, the covering up of such payments by Trump and others constitutes falsifying New York State business records. Ultimately, all of these actions were designed to influence the 2016 presidential election by keeping important information about Trump’s character and crimes out of the news. And while the cover-ups worked to some extent in 2016, presumably the facts are not hidden anymore.

Understandably, however, the news media have had a bit of a hard time describing the subject matter of Trump’s trial for purposes of short headlines or to appeal to the short attention spans of many readers and viewers. Thus, we have seen the trial described as:

President Joe Biden

This past Monday, President Joe Biden held an event at the White House where he unveiled a more than $42 billion investment in high-speed broadband internet around the country. According to President Biden, this funding comes from both the American Rescue Plan (signed into law in March 2021) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (signed in November 2021).  The President indicated that the legislation passed thus far included “$25 billion for high-speed Internet in places where it was out of reach, for schools and libraries to help students connect to the internet if they couldn’t do it at home.” Now, says President Biden, the new funding will “be distributed to 50 states, Washington, D.C., and territories to deliver high-speed Internet in places where there’s neither service or it’s too slow.” The breakdown of such funding includes, for example, over $3.3 billion dedicated to Texas, over $1.8 billion to California, and more than $1.1 billion for Florida.

The President’s broadband investment plan is designed to “connect every person in America to reliable high-speed Internet by 2030.” However, President Biden stated that:

[I]t’s not enough to have access. You need affordability in addition to access. That’s why we worked with internet service providers to bring down prices for Americans struggling with internet payments. It’s called the Affordable Connectivity Program. It’s helping 19 million families save around $30 a month on their internet bills, and some save a lot more.

In short, this was a very important announcement about something that improves people’s lives and helps individuals, students, businesses and others conduct their activities more efficiently. It’s great for our economy and will create jobs as well.

However, at least according to a number of people (such as Mastodon user Kailee @skykiss@sfba.social), “[n]ot a single news outlet aired President Biden’s event.” If that is the case, the fault lies in several places, including with the news media, the Biden administration, Democratic leaders in Congress and in the states, and elsewhere.