September 23, 2019 / by emptywheel

 

The Press Cannot Let Trump Pretend He Gives a Shit about Corruption

I’ve been on an epic road trip with June Bug the Terrorist Foster Dog and my brother (and will be for another week or so); right now I’m sitting in bmaz’s house with JB. So I haven’t followed the story about Trump’s effort to get Ukraine to invent dirt on Joe Biden as closely as I otherwise might have. But one thing is crystal clear: the press is giving Trump way too much room to claim his actions were driven by a concern about corruption, which is how Trump has been trying to justify this rather than deny it.

It’s very important to talk about corruption. If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?…It’s very important that on occasion you speak to somebody about corruption.

Every single report about this should start with a list of things Trump is doing to cover up his own corruption, starting with his numerous lawsuits to try to prevent anyone from reviewing his tax returns and his systematic effort to profit from the presidency.

If Trump claims it’s important to “speak to somebody about corruption,” that conversation should start with full transparency on his own corruption, and there should be no focus on his allegations about Hunter Biden until he has come clean.

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/09/23/the-press-cannot-let-trump-pretend-he-gives-a-shit-about-corruption/