Will Vivek Again Upend GOP Debate With Attack on Corrupt Media?

For years, Republican candidates were too frightened to target the real opposition party in American politics: the corporate media apparatus, which for decades has worked relentlessly to turn every news story into an attack on Republicans and a referendum on rank-and-file conservative voters. Last month, however, this pattern came to an abrupt stop when Vivek Ramaswamy left NBC News’ Kristen Welker speechless when he asked her to acknowledge whether her network’s coverage of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax narrative was “real,” or if it was “Hillary Clinton made-up disinformation.”

As the nation prepares for the fourth GOP primary debate this Wednesday in Alabama, a vital question remains: With more and more smoking guns implicating Joe Biden in corrupt pay-to-play schemes, will Ramaswamy—or any other on-stage candidates—target the corrupt media establishment once again? Or, will they allow themselves to continue to suffer from the spousal abuse syndrome that has for far too long obstructed conservatives’ political ambitions?

Ramaswamy and the other candidates on stage will have another prime opportunity to challenge the media’s new left-wing narrative seen in the recent explosion of content propping up the left’s “Dictatorship Hoax” – the perennial attempt to paint Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. Despite the fact that Joe Biden has orchestrated some of the most audacious executive power grabs in American history, The Atlantic published a special issue this week devoted entirely to claiming that a second Trump presidency would doom American democracy. Another 6,000-word screed by anti-Trump fanatic Robert Kagan in The Washington Post last week claims that Trump’s re-election is a “clear path to dictatorship in the United States.”

Predictably, the corporate media has also failed to accurately cover Biden’s growing mountain of possible criminal acts—providing candidates at this Wednesday’s debate the opportunity not only to raise the issue of Biden’s corruption to a primetime audience, but also to further cement corporate media corruption as a leading issue in the 2024 election.

“Think about who’s moderating this debate.” Ramaswamy said on the debate stage to the NBS News moderators last month. “This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk—we’d have 10 times the viewership, asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about, and bring more people into our party.”

“We’ve got Kristen Welker here,” he continued. “Do you think the Democrats would actually hire Greg Gutfeld to host a Democratic debate? They wouldn’t do it. And so the fact of the matter is, Kristen, I’m going to use this time—because this is actually about you and the media, and the corrupt media establishment—[to] ask you [about] the Trump-Russia collusion hoax that you pushed on this network for years. Was that real? Or was that Hillary Clinton made-up disinformation? Answer the question. Go.” The camera then panned to Welker, who awkwardly smiled and refused to answer Ramaswamy’s question as the crowd erupted in applause.

The fourth Republican debate could not come at a more opportune time—because the questions that Ramaswamy or other candidates could ask are precisely what the American people most want to learn about. In recent weeks, investigations have revealed that Biden received a $40,000 personal check from his family laundered through many families that initially came from China, as well as a $200,000 check from his brother originating from a distressed company in which, according to the House Oversight Committee, “Joe Biden benefited from his family cashing in on the Biden name.”

As James Comer, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, observed, “Bank records don’t lie, and coupled with witness testimony, they reveal that Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain.” He continued: “The financial records obtained to date reveal a pattern where the Bidens sold access to Joe Biden around the world to enrich the Biden family. As the Bidens were sealing deals around the world, Joe Biden showed up, met with, talked with, shook hands with, and had meetings with the foreign nationals sending money to his family.”

Many legal analysts—including George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley—have sounded the alarm on these allegations against Biden. “Influence peddling is a form of corruption,” Turley said to the House Oversight Committee in late September. “The United States has signed treaties to combat this form of corruption around the world—and that is also an inescapable fact,” he said after agreeing that Biden’s actions have warranted the launch of an impeachment inquiry. As Turley noted in his testimony, influence peddling is “commonly facilitated or followed by criminal acts”—meaning that while “the alleged Biden influence peddling may not be criminal, it is most certainly corrupt.”

The decision of major corporate networks to prevent Americans from hearing about these mounting Biden scandals, of course, closely resembles their censorship of the infamous “Laptop from Hell” story, in which social media operatives and media executives colluded to suppress news that was detrimental to the Biden family.

Ramaswamy’s question to Welker during the last debate came on the heels of an AMAC Newsline column which urged the debate’s participants to use the occasion to hold the media’s feet to the fire and suggested that a GOP victory next November will require candidates to start telling the truth about the media establishment and its longtime collaboration with Democrat Party operatives and the left-wing consultant class.

As AMAC Newsline has previously noted, attacks on the corporate media are effective for two reasons: first, they neutralize media smears against Republican candidates (which have long been among the left’s most effective political weapons), and second, they allow voters to realize just how deep-rooted the media’s corruption truly is—potentially laying the groundwork for a Republican landslide next fall.

The relentless failure of the Republican Party to hold the media accountable may have at last seen a definitive exposé in a piece published in The Federalist on Monday in which Mollie Hemingway lambasted Senator James Lankford (R-OK) for allowing George Stephanopoulos to openly promote false narratives surrounding Donald Trump’s candidacy. Republicans like Lankford, Hemingway wrote, “allow the corrupt media and other Democrats to destroy the country through propaganda and lies.” She continued: “Americans are absolutely desperate for even the tiniest bit of Republican backbone and leadership, not mealy-mouthed kowtowing to the press.”

Hemingway’s attack on Stephanopoulos—who worked in the Clinton administration, donated to the Clinton Foundation, and participated in daily strategy calls with Obama administration officials—can be reasonably applied to many members of the media apparatus. Much like NBC’s Chuck Todd, Stephanopoulos was never truly a journalist, but instead a Democrat activist placed in the media by party operatives.

An October 2023 Gallup poll found that Americans’ trust in the media has plummeted to its lowest on record. And it’s no wonder why. Until corporate media executives and personalities can acknowledge their complicity in this waning trust, our nation’s much-needed media reform will remain an impossibility.

For the sake of honor, honesty, and transparency in our media, every American of good will should hope that the GOP will make media corruption a primary issue in the 2024 campaign—and there could be no better opportunity than this Wednesday’s debate.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.