Tavis Smiley gives an example of how Donald Trump gets a pass from the media
Tavis Smiley appeared on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Smiley had some choice words for both Donald Trump and the media.
What troubles me, though, is that Trump is still, to my mind, at least, an unrepentant, irascible religious and racial arsonist.
And so what about how Donald Trump is rising in the polls. He can’t do that absent the kind of campaign he’s running, the issues that he’s raising. And for us to just say Donald Trump is rising in the polls and not connect that to the base message that he’s putting out there, I think…
Donald Trump did not take kindly to Smiley’s fact based characterization. He sent out the following tweet.
Why does @ThisWeekABC w/ @GStephanopoulos allow a hater & racist like @tavissmiley to waste good airtime? @ABC can do much better than him!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2016
Tavis Smiley then appeared on CNN with Don Lemon where he was asked to address his comment and Trump’s response. Smiley’s response was a very important one that was likely lost to many.
I am on your program tonight because I made a comment about Donald Trump yesterday on a morning show. And within a matter of hours, Donald Trump had tweeted about me, the tweet that you read earlier in this program. … If that story broke over the weekend about this white supremacist — again he can’t be responsible for who is supporting him — but how can he get around with calling me a racist and hater in less than twenty four hours but since the weekend he hasn’t gotten around to condemning a white supremacist for supporting his campaign. You see, this is what I am talking about. And nobody in the media is asking these questions.
In effect Smiley is calling the media shallow. They no longer do any deep probing on many issues that matter. Donald Trump’s prolific use of Twitter to get his message out freely, an account the media monitors and promotes judiciously, demands that he would address issues like the the supremacist supporter. Yet, crickets.
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