On Wednesday, former Bush political strategist Karl Rove wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal titled "Media Partisanship in Plain View." He called out two examples. The first was a Washington Post story strongly suggesting Republican governors were ending enhanced unemployment benefits for their own personal gain. Reporter Yeganeh Torbati began with West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, who owns the Greenbrier resort in that state.
"Republican governors in 25 states are in the midst of a giant economic experiment, ceasing enhanced jobless aid for an estimated 4 million people, arguing that the generous benefits are dissuading people from going back to work," Torbati reported. "But a number of these governors have personal connections to businesses that are trying to find workers and could benefit from the policy change, according to a Washington Post review of financial disclosures from state elected officials."
Rove argued that the Post isn't likely to play this game with liberals and Democrats, investigating, for example, if Democrats would get personal gain from investments in renewable energy while they back a "Green New Deal." Take, for example, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. On May 27, Matthew Foldi and Collin Anderson reported for the Washington Free Beacon:
On Wednesday, Granholm confirmed she earned a $1.6 million profit on her shares of Proterra amid a firestorm over her financial ties to an electric vehicle company repeatedly promoted by the Biden administration. In selling off her shares, Granholm was able to defer paying capital gains taxes on the $1.6 million sale because cabinet officials are not penalized with the tax on assets they are required to sell as a condition of joining the administration.
Washington Post coverage? Zero.
Then Fox News contributor Rove turned to CNN's Jake Tapper, who has ostentatiously argued he's not interested in interviewing Republicans who challenged the certification of electoral votes for President Biden, or who forwarded the "Big Lie" that Biden benefited from election fraud.
Mr. Tapper gets to choose his guests, but is he outraged only at Republican election challengers? Thirty-two Democrats voted against accepting Electoral College results after President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election, claiming voting machines were manipulated to create his 118,601-vote Ohio victory.
Yet since the fall of 2014, Mr. Tapper has conducted at least 17 interviews of Democrats who voted to reject the 2004 certification. One leader of that effort, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, has been Mr. Tapper’s guest three times this year alone. The host interviewed another, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, this month. Other Democratic election deniers interviewed by Mr. Tapper since 2014 include Rep. Barbara Lee, Sen. Ed Markey, the now-deceased Rep. John Lewis, and former Reps. Lacy Clay and Jesse Jackson Jr.
I think Democrats who voted in 2005 against certification and Republicans who did so in 2021 were both wrong. But will Mr. Tapper employ the same standard with Democratic election deniers that he has applied to Republicans? Will he refuse to interview House Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson, Financial Services Chairman Maxine Waters and the other Democratic election deniers still in Congress? Or is it Mr. Tapper’s standard that some election deniers are tolerable and others aren’t?
Let's guess that Tapper would argue that there was no riot at the Capital in 2005, and that somehow, the Democrat rejectionists were sort of putting on a show, that they weren't sincere "election deniers."
