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Good evening. It's Thursday, July 27.
Tonight: the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be held in Atlanta starting at 9 p.m. Eastern. However, the Trump campaign decided it did not want the involvement of the Presidential Debate Commission, which it perceived as having been biased against Trump. The campaign agreed to give CNN the full autonomy and unlimited power to control the debate, subject only to the agreement of both campaigns. Now, in the past and in the future, CNN has barely hidden its vehement anti-Trump hatred and activism. And the same is true of the two CNN personalities who will moderate the debate tonight Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. But CNN's power over this debate happened solely because both campaigns, including the Trump campaign, agreed.
Early this week on one of the CNN morning programs hosted by a woman named Kasie Hunt, an on-air meltdown by that host revealed so much about the function of the U.S. corporate media in general, and CNN in particular. CNN invited to the program the Trump campaign's official press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, to discuss the debate in every aspect. But as soon as she started expressing her distrust in Jake Tapper, pointing to all the lies and disinformation Tapper has previously spread about Trump and the way he compared Trump to Hitler, this CNN host angrily interrupted her, demanding that she refrain from any criticism of any CNN host. As Leavitt continued to express her criticism, the CNN host angrily cut off that interview.
All of that stood in very stark contrast to the virtual giggly collaboration that very same host had on that very same morning when she invited one of Hillary Clinton's longtime henchmen, Phillipe Reines, to explain all the things that Biden should do to crush Trump. It was collaborative and friendly, and they were having fun.
We've intended to examine all of this over the last several nights but have run out of time each time. As we said, the behavior of the CNN host is so deranged as to be quite entertaining, but it also reveals so much about the mindset, the mentality and the real function of CNN and the corporate media outlets like it. Given that CNN is about to host and completely control tonight's presidential debate, it is well worth examining tonight what happened there and what it shows.
Then: one of the topics we have reported on and covered most on this show is the Biden administration's unprecedented censorship regime, whereby they spent years successfully coercing and threatening Big Tech platforms to censor dissent on COVID-19, U.S. elections, Ukraine and much more. The people who are censored under that regime brought a lawsuit against the Biden administration and all four federal judges who have ruled on this program– a lower district court judge and a unanimous three-judge appellate panel – all ruled that these censorship actions not only violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, but, in the words of the appellate court, constitute one of the gravest assaults on free speech seen in decades, if not ever. The U.S. Supreme Court late last year decided to review this whole case. And back in March, it held an oral argument on the ruling.
We reported extensively on that oral argument on this show, and at the time, more or less concluded that a majority of the justices seemed very inclined to dismiss the case, not by finding that the actions of the Biden administration were legal and constitutional, but instead by embracing some theory or other that would enable the court to avoid having to decide the question entirely this week. That is exactly what the Supreme Court did by a 6 to 3 majority. The court reversed the ruling of the lower court and held that these plaintiffs, these American citizens, had no right to sue their government on these questions because they lacked what courts call “standing to sue.”
Even though the court did not approve of the Biden administration's censorship regime on the merits, meaning they didn't say that the Biden administration's actions were constitutionally permissible, this is still one of the most unfortunate and potentially destructive rulings in years, as it effectively gives the Biden White House or any other future administration the green light to force Big Tech to censor dissent on behalf of the government. We'll examine this ruling in detail, explain what happened and assess its ongoing and future implications.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
