This is a new low. Another new low.
Newsweek’s left-leaning bias has become increasingly more obvious, but the publication took the occasion of Charles Manson’s death to attack President Trump.
In a piece titled, “How murderer Charles Manson and Donald Trump used language to gain followers,” the once-reputable Newsweek made the “journalistic” choice to compare the sitting United States president to a cult leader and mass murderer.
The publication later changed the title, removing the reference to Trump.
“A charismatic leader knows how to speak to people in a way that will emotionally engage those people,” former President of the American Psychoanalytic Association Mark Smaller told the author of the piece, Melissa Matthews whose other notable articles include “Why more orgasms can relieve sinus pressure,” and “Is PMS real or a myth?” according to Fox News.
“Our current president speaks in an emotional or affective way to large numbers of people in our country who feel a kind of alienation or disconnection from the government,” Smaller told Newsweek. “They feel very responded to and become his political base.”
Newsweek did offer up a note – four paragraphs into the piece – that Smaller was “clear that he does not believe President Donald Trump is similar to Manson, who was convicted of killing actress Sharon Tate and six others, or that their followers have any shared beliefs or characteristics.”
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According to Smaller, Newsweek explained, cult followers like Manson’s are so “seduced by feelings of acceptance and understanding that they accept their leaders’ ideologies regardless of how destructive or dangerous they may be,” implying that Trump uses language to manipulate and prey on people.
The vice president of liberal media watchdog Media Research Center believes Newsweek stopped being a legitimate news organization years ago, according to Fox News.
“It’s almost predictable that some idiot online will write an outlandish story connecting Trump to the villain du jour, all designed to generate web traffic and ad dollars. We worked through all the major historical villains the media could tie the president to — Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini. They called him a strongman, a dictator and worse. Now it’s Manson, Weinstein and probably Mugabe,” Dan Gainor told Fox News. “The media are running out of hyperbole. It’s all embarrassingly stupid. No one gets held to account for it. And the cycle begins again with the next clickbait article.”
Larry O’Connor, a columnist for Mediaite, noted that according to Newsweek’s definition, even former President Obama could fit the criteria.
“One wonders if this article could have been written about any charismatic individual who inspired a large group of people. Especially if the people he inspired viewed this individual as a transcendent figure who could solve all their problems and concerns,” O’Connor wrote. “But Newsweek would never write that article, would they?”
Fox News’ Howard Kurtz called the piece “despicable” while speaking with Laura Ingraham on “The Ingraham Angle” on Tuesday, saying it followed a “lunatic trend of comparing Donald Trump to the worst villains in human history.”
Greg Gutfeld, host of Fox News’ “The Five,” lamented the loss of credibility at Newsweek which he credited with helping make him “a smarter kid” growing up. He slammed the Manson-Trump piece as a “thinly-pressed carcass of mindvomit.”
Most people “use language to gain followers,” Gutfeld noted. “Isn’t that what we all do? Doesn’t that make Newsweek like Manson?”
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Frieda@bizpacreview.com
Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
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