Democrats on Capitol Hill and the media are colluding to delegitimize President-elect Donald Trump before he even takes the oath of office in less than one month. This past week, they failed in their attempt to pressure the Electoral College not to follow their legal duty and represent the will of the voter. In fact, Hillary Clinton, in yet another of her many presidential electoral embarrassments, lost the most electoral votes in our nation’s history.
This also follows after the Obama administration and traditional news outlets have connived a canard that Trump won the election due to the Russian hacking of the Clinton campaign. Obama, in an interview with Trevor Noah, claimed that there "were very clear relationships between members of the president-elect's campaign team and Russians." A senior Obama administration official leaked to The Washington Post that a "secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House."
Perhaps it is true that Vladimir Putin preferred that Trump beat Clinton. And perhaps Russian intelligence leaked the Clinton campaign emails with the intention of controlling the media narrative in Trump's favor. Most certainly, the American people deserve full knowledge and transparency on whether a foreign power meddled in our internal affairs. However, it should be noted that the emails were a boring nothingburger which chronicled campaign infighting, liberal media collusion, and the Clinton Foundation's misappropriation of funds — who knew! This is even less surprising than Captain Renault finding out that gambling was going on in Casablanca.
However, if Americans are supposed to demand the truth on Russian’s meddling, then we also should demand accountability from NBC for leaking Trump’s private 2005 conversation with Billy Bush to The Washington Post only two days before the second presidential debate and less than three weeks out from Election Day. In fact, the nationally syndicated "Access Hollywood" was furious that "somebody at NBC News or the 'Today' show leaked the tape," which NBC did not have the proprietary rights to do.
As Chris Ruddy explained, NBC leaked the private conversation instead of first reporting the tape itself because "the problem was that Trump’s comments were subject to the 'off-the-record' rule. NBC couldn’t simply reveal this tape."
Ironically, NBC's plan to hijack the election not only failed, but started the Trump campaign’s late winning momentum. In a textbook case of crisis management lead by Steve Bannon, Trump first issued a carefully worded apology through Facebook — allowing the campaign to control their response and make sure the voter was aware that there was an easily accessible full response. Trump described his remarks as "locker room" talk but shrewdly pointed out this tape was just words as opposed to Bill Clinton’s past actions.
The brilliance of the apology was that Trump used this opportunity to deflect and counter-attack to Bill and Hillary’s chronic abuse of women. Then, mere hours before the scheduled debate, Trump held an impromptu press conference with the Clinton’s victims. This was quintessential Trump — fearless, brave, unapologetic, and attention grabbing with tabloid flare. Remember, some of Trump’s most powerful supporters and advisers — including Reince Priebus and Condoleezza Rice — demanded that Trump drop out of the race only the day before.
In an interview earlier this week, Trump Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway said that the press conference made Hillary's debate performance "halting." Both Clintons looked despondent at the debate. Bill could not wait to leave. And Hillary even refused to shake Trump’s hand as is customary.
In one of the best exchanges of all the debates and where Clinton came closest to losing her cool, she angrily looked at Trump and said "Okay, Donald. I know you are into big diversion tonight, anything to avoid talking about your campaign and the way it’s exploding, and the way Republicans are leaving you, but —." When Trump quickly interrupted with a prescient response "Let’s see what happens."
At that moment, I remember thinking, "He can pull this off if he stays on message." Trump did, and gave a textbook example of the "Art of the Political Comeback."
It should also come as no surprise that after the Trump Transition announced that Steve Bannon had been named the Chief Strategist of the White House, the left barraged Bannon with vicious character attacks, including that he is an anti-Semite. The rules of warfare dictate that you should always take out your enemy's strongest asset as quickly as possible. However, these frivolous drivels of nonsense were quickly quashed by his allies at the Zionist Organization of America, who took the lead in combating the ADL's vile misuse of its mandate.
However, despite Trump winning, NBC should not escape any consequences for its gross violation of journalistic integrity and ethics. They released the tape with the clear intention of altering the election outcome. And it would come as no surprise if the Clinton camp coordinated the illegal release of the private conversation. In fact, actor Tom Arnold has just admitted that Hillary Clinton directly pressured him to release a private "Apprentice" tape.
NBC should follow Fox News’s lead during the Roger Ailes controversy and hire an independent investigator. And it should hold itself accountable. This would help rebuild trust between the public and the media.
Sam Nunberg is an attorney and political strategist with a focus on communications, messaging, and persuasive narratives. In 2008, he was an adviser to Gov. Mitt Romney with a focus on grassroots coalitions and conservative outreach. From 2011 until mid-2015, Mr. Nunberg served as a political and public affairs adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump. For more of his reports, Click Here Now.
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