The Trump Tapes

Donald Trump's real estate seminar business, Trump University, has recently stopped functioning due to a series of lawsuits it currently faces. In response to the lawsuits, a coalition of all major television networks has filed a motion to demand the release of video footage of these lawsuits. In response, Trump's lawyers are fighting to delay release of the footage until after the election, claiming that the footage will be used out of context to attack Trump's presidential campaign.

Over the course of the election the Trump campaign has received a large amount of free media publicity. Trump and his campaign have stated that they plan to not produce any of their own ads, instead using only "earned media". The writer of this blog post (loosely identified as the "Media Matters Staff") points out that Trump is not leaving all media to produce its own image, and that, as evident by this incident, he is only leaving positive coverage alone while suppressing negative coverage. The author did not say that Trump has stated that he will leave all media coverage alone, only that he will only rely on earned media, and in this way I do not think the author has actually asserted hypocrisy on Trump's part. However, Trump has previously said that he embraces all media coverage (though this was not stated in the article), so the point still stands.

So, the author does have a point. Trump's statements here are contradictory and they do create a new instance of hypocrisy on Trump's part. The author's sources are sound, providing sources for all their referenced events. I would prefer proper citations, rather than just hyperlinks, so that in the future the sources can still be found even if the referenced URLs have changed, though the article is thoroughly sourced. Most prominently it links to a Politico article on the events, and seeing as Politico is one of our suggested sources, and seeing as there is other similar coverage on the events, I would say that the evidence is reliably sound.

The article is short and digestible, though it also contains a good deal of information. In this way I would think that it is oriented towards politically involved liberals who read political blogs in their spare time, for example on their lunch breaks on mass transportation. The article does sneak in a remark about Trump attacking the presiding judge with racist remarks, though this doesn't relate to the rest of the event, meaning that the writer and reader are already non-Trump supporters, which again suggests a liberal audience.

The article is Trump Suddenly Encounters Media Attention He Doesn't Want by the Media Matters staff, published at 4:00 on Thursday June 16, 2016.