In October of 1991, then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas faced a contentious Senate hearing that focused on allegations made by a former subordinate, Anita Hall. She claimed that Thomas sexually harassed her in several ways, including making references to a pubic hair on a coke can and supposedly praising a porn star.
The Senate Judiciary Committee spent days reviewing these allegations and were on the verge of rejecting Thomas for the position. When Thomas was finally given a chance to address the committee, he responded with justifiable anger. He lambasted the Senators and blasted the entire proceeding with a very effective and indignant retort. Thomas said, “This is a circus. This is a national disgrace, and from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”
This show of outrage allowed Thomas to turn the tables on the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Eventually, Thomas survived and was confirmed, but he has never been given the respect he deserves as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. To this day, he is discriminated against as a conservative African American. For example, the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. gives plenty of attention to Anita Hill and other radicals like avowed communist Angela Davis, but ignores Thomas, the only African American member on the nation’s highest court. This is truly a disgrace, but, of course if Thomas was a liberal, he would be given the royal treatment by the museum.
The high-tech lynching of Thomas was replicated in 2011 by the media when African American businessman Herman Cain was the leading candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. After several good performances in the debates boosted Cain to the top of the polls, allegations surfaced in the media that he sexually harassed several women. Immediately, Cain was under siege and his poll numbers collapsed. Although he denied the charges and called the campaign against him “a witch hunt,” the damage was already done and his campaign was toast. After his exit from the race, the women in question disappeared as well. Cain was effectively eliminated not by verifiable evidence of wrongdoing, but by suspicious allegations alone.
Obviously, Thomas and Cain suffered greatly from unfair and unproven attacks; however, their treatment was nowhere near as bad as the kind of hell that 2016 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is enduring in this campaign. He is facing his own type of high-tech lynching in this presidential race.
Although he is not an African American, Donald Trump does share some characteristics with Thomas and Cain. Like Thomas and Cain, he is a conservative who thinks for himself and has “different ideas.” As Thomas faced attacks for not kowtowing to “an old order,” Trump is taking on something very similar, an entrenched establishment in many different areas. His campaign is simultaneously opposed by the political establishment in both parties, international financial and political powers, the media elite, and the clear majority of the Wall Street financial power brokers.
While his opponent, Hillary Clinton, has universal Democratic Party support and is receiving campaign assistance from the President, Vice President, First Lady, former adversary Senator Bernie Sanders and almost every elected official in her party, Donald Trump is literally standing alone against these powerful forces arrayed against him. One result has been almost universally negative media coverage of his campaign.
A report by the Media Research Center (MRC) showed that between July 29 and October 20, the broadcast networks news programs devoted more time to Trump than Clinton. Nevertheless, the researchers found that the Trump coverage was an astounding 91% negative. Trump rightly calls this this type of media treatment “greatest pile-on in American history.”
The MRC report indicated that the media was much more interested in the allegations of groping and inappropriate sexual behavior of Trump toward women than the various Clinton scandals involving her emails, the Clinton Foundation, the Benghazi terror attack, her health problems or the WikiLeaks disclosures. This analysis was prepared after the MRC reviewed 588 news stories on the broadcast news shows during the 12-week investigation.
The broadcast news report followed another amazing study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity, which found that 96% of all media professionals who donated to either presidential campaign supported Hillary Clinton. This type of bias even extends to Fox News as millions of Americans noted after the showdown this week between host Megyn Kelly and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Gingrich blasted Kelly for her obsession with the allegations against Trump and said she was “obsessed with sex” instead of being interested in important issues of public policy.
In these final days of the race, the media has their marching orders, “destroy Trump.” It will be difficult to completely suppress the bombshell news that the FBI is reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, but the media will still find plenty of time to highlight women making very old and dubious allegations against Trump. The entire presidential campaign has been a sad commentary on the state of our corrupt and biased media today.
Fortunately, more Americans are becoming aware of this high-tech Trump lynching. Hopefully they will discount the drumbeat of negative messages that are all around them and make an important commitment to support Trump and “Make America Great Again!”