THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

THE MEDIA'S "HONEST ABES" GO STRAIGHT TO DIRTY TRICKS | 2000-02-19

When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the presidential nomination on the Reform Party ticket, he denounced Pat Buchanan as a "Hitler lover." He repeated all the wildest nonsense about Buchanan's book criticizing Neville Chamberlain's 1939 policy towards Hitler.

It turned out that criticizing Chamberlain was suddenly being pro-Hitler.

McCain said the same thing, of course.

And when Jesse Ventura announced his withdrawal from the Reform Party, he, too, had an attack to make on Buchanan. He said that Buchanan was evil because David Duke had endorsed him.

Ventura did not say that Buchanan had any control over what David Duke did. He simply said Buchanan was evil for having gotten his "endorsement." Actually, I saw the interview. It wasn't an endorsement. What Duke said was that, as an elected chairman of very large Republican Party unit, he might decide to support Buchanan instead of the Republican nominee.

Several hundred thousand of the rest of us previous Republicans have said the same thing.

Back when McCain was being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, there was a presidential race going on. The government that was torturing McCain and his buddies made it perfectly clear that it preferred McGovern over Nixon. Nobody, but nobody, blamed McGovern for the fact that the Communists supported him. The media wouldn't allow it.

But when Ventura, who is a media hero for being "honest," uses the same tactic against Buchanan, not one single media outlet made a murmur of protest.