Scandals

Donald Trump is not yet president, but the trained hamsters in the main stream media are already salivating over potential conflict of interest scandals that may be associated with his "Trump" holdings. Trump's situation is unique, and given a media that has reverted to it's full adversarial role after eight years of obsequious compliance, Trump "scandals" will be an everyday occurrence. If a Russian diplomat checks into a Trump hotel, stories about "payoffs" will blossom. This, of course, will be juxtaposed with rapturous recollections of the scandal-free Obama years.

Barack Obama was at a Democratic fundraiser in San Diego (as reported by Fred Lucas) where he said:

“Here’s a guy [Darrell Issa] who called my administration perhaps the most corrupt in history, despite the fact that actually, we have not had a major scandal in my administration,.”

Time magazine's Joe Klein, one of Barack Obama's many trained hamsters in the media, must have listened to Obama's speech and then wrote a puff piece aptly entitled "Amazing Grace," in which he stated:

The first African-American President of the United States was never going to be boring. But Obama was right too. There would be little melodrama and absolutely no hint of scandal during his time in office.

So ... the Obama administration has "not had a major scandal in [his] administration ...”

Funny. I thought otherwise. Over the past eight years, I've noted scandals that are at least as serious as any that occurred in other administrations, A simple list might be worthwhile to jog the memory:

1. The IRS Scandal—a government agency weaponized against Obama's opponents
2. The VA Scandal—a government agency hiding its abject incompetent in treating veterans
3. The GSA scandal—a government agency spending tax money excessively on travel and conferences
4. Benghazi—senior administration and government officials lying to protect their political interests
5. Clinton Emails—senior government officials lying to cover up illegal use of a private email server that jeopardized national security
6. Fast and Furious—government officials sponsoring a gun running operation into Mexico; the guns were later linked to drug cartel killings
7. Solyndra—government subsidies to Democrat friendly business people against the advise of those who oversee the subsidies and credits; the company went bankrupt and the taxpayers were left holding the bag
8. DoJ—a series of instances (think: voter intimidation by the Black Panther party or the Hillary Clinton investigation) in which selective enforcement was the rule, not the exception
9. Ransom money—paying over a billion dollars in ransom (some in cash) to Iran for a hostage release
10. Inside baseball stuff—for example, the Obama administration used tens of millions of in taxpayer money for "political bribery" of Democrat members of congressman during the Obamacare run up

Of course, all of this is water under the bridge. The media refused to aggressively investigate any of these scandals in order to protect the president that they helped elect. So, in a way, I suppose Obama and Klein are right—the scandals didn't happen because ... well ... the media wouldn't cover them in the way that they covered a two bit break-in that was called "Watergate" or an arms sale to Iran that was intended to get hostages released, called "Iran-contra." I guess scandals only happen when GOP presidents are in office.

No matter what he does to remove business conflicts, Donald Trump will be a media target for scandals, real or imagined. The difference is, that during a Trump administration the media will pursue every single one. That's good thing, but it also demonstrates the media's blatant bias and utter hypocrisy.