Canadian broadcasters and some online outlets are, once again, providing political cover for Trump in the Reagan ad story.
If there is one thing about the mainstream media you can rely on, it’s that they will stoop to any low to provide as much political cover to Trump as humanly possible. After all, they are heavily biased towards sucking up to Trump for reasons that defy all logic and explanation. The recent blow up over an Ontario produced ad featuring Ronald Reagan ultimately proved to be the latest example of this.
The context here is that the Doug Ford Ontario government produced an advertisement and aired it on US television networks. The advertisement aired during the Major League Baseball World Series between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers along with other broadcast programming. The intention was obvious: to get the attention of the Trump administration with Trump obsessively watching fake news programming, Fox News.
Reagan, of course, was known for being against tariffs. Utilizing Reagan to prove the point that what Trump is doing is against conservative values – in that case, those values being about free trade and open markets. This in an effort to further drive a wedge between the supporters of the fascist Trump regime and traditional conservatives. Ford knew full well that this would be effective in that context.
The Trump reaction was predictable. At first, he brushed it off like it was nothing before throwing his typical toddler tantrum about the ad and cut off all trade talks with Canada in the process. In a bid to suck up to the Trump administration, the Ronald Reagan Foundation pushed the argument that the ad took Reagan’s words out of context. This while encouraging people to watch the original video which you can see below:
Now, compare that to the original ad:
So… what exactly was ‘misleading’ or ‘taken out of context’ about the ad? Nothing, really. Obviously, if you are condensing a 5 minute speech down to a 60 second ad, there are words that are going to get removed, but honestly, I don’t see how the ad is actually misleading in the first place.
US based digital rights website, TechDirt, rightfully pointed out that not only was the ad accurate in both words and context, but Trump’s temper tantrum shot the popularity of both the ad and the original speech to the moon. This, of course, while damaging an already severely damaged Trump administration.
While this is backfiring on Trump, Canada’s broadcast media had other ideas. As the story was blowing up, broadcasters quickly did what they could to make Trump’s obviously false accusations as valid sounding as humanly possible. While covering the Trump ad, mainstream broadcast media pushed the narrative that the ad was “controversial” and kept saying that they are going to provide the real context of what Reagan really said – as if to validate Trump without question. Some of that political cover spilled over into online coverage where organizations like the CBC apparently felt it necessary to speak to “experts” about this:
An Ontario government ad that attracted the wrath of U.S. President Donald Trump was successful — even if it didn’t produce the outcome provincial officials might have anticipated, say experts in political communication.
(insert eye-roll here)
It’s quite pathetic that you have to rely on experts to tell you that an advertisement was not misleading – especially when the source material is freely available for all to see. At any rate, the coverage just stunk of slavish “BSAB” mentality while being ridiculously lazy in just watching the 5 minute address and the original ad and coming to a reasonable conclusion. Even raising the possibility that the ad was misleading is completely insane on the mainstream media’s part.
Now, in a normal political climate, this ad would be effective and a great play. The problem is that we are not in a normal political climate. Of course, as is typical for Doug Ford, the real question for him is, “now what?” Ford wanted an ad that Trump would see. Done. Ford wanted to push an effective ad. Done. Ford wanted to piss off Trump. Done. So… now what? Trump cut off trade talks during his toddler tantrum. It’s difficult to really see any kind of end game that Ford was hoping for. What’s the follow-up move that this tees up? As it turns out, the realization that Ford didn’t think his cunning plan all the way through.
The Ford government announced that he is pulling the ad after the damage was done. Even Ford knew that this whole thing backfired on him as well. The always insufferable Conservative Party leader, Pierre Poilievre, spent all day blaming Prime Minister, Mark Carney, for Ford’s fuck up because of course he did. Carney spoke to Ford about the situation and Ford agreed to pull the ad, knowing full well it did Canada no favours. Carney is now stuck dealing with an additional political mess on top of an already nearly impossible negotiation process with the impulsive toddler that will change his mind on big issues on a whim. I think it goes without saying that Carney didn’t need this additional headache. If Ford wanted to do something, then I would argue that he could continue with counter-tariffs and other major economic moves. At least that would add some additional bargaining chips on Canada’s side unlike what the ad did.
At any rate, there’s a lot of blame to go around for this mess. There’s the media that tried to falsely validate the accusations that the ad was misleading, the Ford government for clearly not thinking this plan all the way through, and, of course, the Trump administration for putting everyone in this stupid and unnecessary trade mess in the first place. The latter being the biggest problem here.
