C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2020
ny spokesman. “We are always
looking for interesting topics and
guests, and some guests come
with views that are not popular.
As it relates to the segment fea-
turing Dr. Mikovits we reviewed it
further and determined it to be
inappropriate to air.”
In a text exchange this week,
Attkisson also defended her
work. “As I reported, there are
two divergent views of [hydroxy-
chloroquine] that have tended to
fall along political lines, and the
jury is still out,” she wrote. “This
is in contrast to widespread re-
ports that stated or implied the
scientific case on hydroxychloro-
quine as a potential treatment or
preventive measure had been
closed, even as multiple studies
on it — including by the govern-
ment — were actively underway.”
She added: “Ironically, power-
ful interests are able to success-
fully direct media attention so
that the scrutiny falls on the
accurate reporting rather than
the many false and misleading
reports.... The idea that certaininterests are working so hard to
censor this information should be
a red flag that leads all of us to ask
why.”
As it turns out, Sinclair’s chief
executive, Christopher Ripley, is a
hydroxychloroquine enthusiast,
who championed the drug in an
April email to Sinclair employees.
“On the good news front, there
is a growing medical consensus
(lack of large-scale tests aside)
that hydroxychloroquine plus
zinc and azithromycin is an effec-
tive treatment for the virus and is
believed to materially impact pa-
tient outcomes,” Ripley wrote.
“These drugs have been around
and widely used for decades so
their side effects are minimal and
well know[n], and production
can be scaled quickly. It is my
hope that every hospital in the
country will make this a standard
protocol and dramatically reduce
the deaths that may occur in the
weeks to come.”
Bolling — who landed an inter-
view with Trump in early July —
has echoed the president’s urgen-cy to “reopen” the economy dur-
ing the pandemic and has ampli-
fied Trump’s concerns about the
potential for fraud with mail-in
balloting, despite scant evidence
of it.
During an interview in July
with Sam Reed, a former Republi-
can secretary of state in Washing-
ton state, Bolling asked, “Tell us
about the fraud that could hap-
pen.” He later asked, “So do you
not see the opportunity for fraud
with mail-in voting?” Reed re-
plied that voting by mail “is a very
good system,” if the state prepares
for it. “We haven’t really had any
problems.”
I n a tweet in May, Bolling allud-
ed to another conspiracy theory:
that billionaire philanthropist
George Soros has helped organize
protests in the wake of George
Floyd’s death. He called George
Soros the “OG” — a slang term
meaning “original gangster” — of
“organizing and financing riots,
looting and civil unrest” — an
unfounded statement with anti-
Semitic overtones. Soros, who ishave frequently sought to under-
mine — was the mastermind be-
hind a plot to create the coronavi-
rus and export it to China.
Sinclair and Bolling initially
defended the segment, which
briefly streamed on some of its
stations’ websites. It featured an
interview with Judy Mikovits,
star of a debunked video called
“The Plandemic” that was
banned by Facebook and You-
Tube for spreading misinforma-
tion. “ Did Dr. Fauci create Covid-
19?” read an on-screen graphic.
Amid growing outrage, the
company pulled it from its broad-
cast lineup, and Bolling said it
would be “reworked.” Sinclair
eventually decided to drop it alto-
gether.
Sinclair, based in the Baltimore
suburb of Hunt Valley, has repeat-
edly defended the independence
and objectivity of the local news
reporting that is carried on its
many stations. But its nationally
distributed news and commen-
tary programs, produced in
Washington, have periodically
been embroiled in controversy
for their perceived Trump-friend-
ly bias.
Following the 2016 presiden-
tial campaign, Trump’s son-in-
law, Jared Kushner, boasted
about an agreement with Sinclair
that gave the company’s stations
special access. (Sinclair said it
offered the same terms to Hillary
Clinton’s campaign but was re-
jected.) In 2017, the company
hired former Trump aide Boris
Epshteyn as its national political
commentator; he has since re-
turned to the Trump campaign.
Several of Sinclair’s hosts and
reporters, such as Bolling and
journalist James Rosen, were for-
mer stars at Fox News. Sinclair
also carries a program hosted by
former Fox News host Bill O’Reil-
ly on its streaming platform, Stirr.
Sinclair attracted unwelcome
attention early last year when an
eerie compilation video of its
many news anchors from across
the country reading the same
promotional script went viral.
Sinclair said it was merely high-
lighting its commitment to accu-
rate reporting; critics said its
reference to “fake news” was an
effort to boost Trump’s attacks on
the news media.
The pattern has suggested that
the company, controlled by the
heirs of founder Julian Sinclair
Smith, has harnessed its station
group as a political vehicle. “Their
purpose seems to be to [promote]
Donald Trump and far-right opin-
ion,” said Lewis Friedland, a jour-
nalism professor at the University
of Wisconsin.
In a statement, Sinclair’s repre-
SINCLAIR FROM C1 Jewish, has been accused without
evidence by authoritarian gov-
ernments around the world with
fomenting unrest.
According to tracking by Me-
dia Matters, the liberal watchdog
group, Bolling has repeatedly
raised the discredited notion that
the coronavirus was engineered
by Chinese scientists as a biologi-
cal weapon. In late April, he inter-
viewed former Trump adviser
Stephen K. Bannon, who offered
just such a conspiratorial view
without challenge from Bolling.
During the same program, Rep.
Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), told
Bolling he was “concerned” about
the bioweapons claim, based on
classified briefings.
Bolling initially agreed to an
interview for this story, but then
declined.
In addition to Trump himself,
top administration officials and
Trump supporters have been reg-
ular guests on Bolling’s program
over the past two months. The
guest list includes Vice President
Pence, senior adviser Kellyanne
Conway, acting deputy secretary
of Homeland Security Ken Cuc-
cinelli and White House officials
Peter Navarro and Ja’Ron Smith.
Others include Trump campaign
spokesman Hogan Gidley, Trump
lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and
Trump loyalists Sen. Tom Cotton
(R-Ark.) and Rep. Devin Nunes
(R-Calif.). Housing and Urban De-
velopment Secretary Ben Carson
has appeared twice.
Sinclair countered that Bolling
interviewed several Democratic
primary candidates in the early
months of the campaign.
“Sinclair is terrific, I have to
say,” Trump said during his July
interview with Bolling, the sec-
ond he has granted to Bolling
since October.
For some of those who’ve
worked for Sinclair, the conserva-
tive slant is familiar. Station news
managers were used to receiving
“must-run” directives from head-
quarters for Epshteyn’s commen-
taries; they say they still receive
daily news reports that favor
Trump’s position or attack his
critics.
“Sinclair has always wanted to
be Fox News-plus,” said Israel
Balderas, a former anchor and
reporter for a Sinclair-owned sta-
tion in Florida and a former seg-
ment producer at Fox News.
“Well, if it walks like a duck and
talks like a duck.. .”
Balderas, now a journalism
professor, added, “Time and time
again, [their] message seems to
be, ‘Trump isn’t responsible [for
the response to the pandemic]
and he’s not to blame.’ They’re in
the business of making excuses
for him.”
[email protected]
Sinclair CEO has touted the use of hydroxychloroquine
ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
Sinclair hosts Eric Bolling, above with first lady Melania Trump at a town hall meeting last year, and
Sharyl Attkisson, at left, have both defended their work relating to the coronavirus pandemic.sentatives drew a distinction be-
tween its local newscasts and the
opinion programming it produc-
es.
“It is important to note that
[Bolling’s show] ‘America This
Week’ is a political talk show that
aims to bring together a diverse
set of viewpoints and that the
views of the guests and the host
are their own, and not Sinclair’s,”
said Michael Padovano, a compa-J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESSRobinson’s pursuit of the same
thing — and yet one was allowed
to see it as a right, while one had
to see it as an impossibility. The
Trump family fortune, for what
it’s worth, was partially built on
this dichotomy: In the 1970s,Trump Management was sued by
the Justice Department for racial
discrimination in its apartment
leasing — acts that reportedly
included Trump’s father
instructing a rental agent to take
the application of a qualifiedBlack prospective tenant, “put it
in a drawer and leave it there.”
Queens isn’t the suburbs, but it
was aspirational for some.
Trump’s vision of the
Suburban Housewife is an
aproned fantasy that no longerexists, and maybe never did. At
least not the way he imagined it.
For one thing, the women he’s
talking about are today more
likely to call themselves stay-at-
home moms, work-at-home
moms or domestic CEOs.
But the terminology isn’t the
issue. The issue is that the
“Lifestyle Dream” he’s describing
isn’t suburban women’s
universal dream, it’s his. It’s a
view in which American women
should be more “bothered” by
“low income” people than they
are by inequality and
discrimination. It’s a view in
which the American Dream
belongs to a few, and those few
have the duty and right to keep
everyone else out. The SHASLDs
who live in the suburb of his
mind are fantasies. Because they
are not real, they have no past.
They were never, themselves,
struggling to move from a spare
bedroom to an apartment, from
an apartment to a house with
stairs. In real life, of course, the
suburbs are populated with
plenty of people who have lived
out a different Donna Reed
fantasy: the one portrayed in
“It’s a Wonderful Life,” where she
and Jimmy Stewart arrive with
bread and wine to welcome an
immigrant family to their own
proudly purchased first home.
Donald Trump is not really
talking about SHASLDs, and he’s
not really talking about the
suburbs. Neither is Michelle
Obama, who later in the podcast
described her own parents’ life-
lesson this way: “If something
good happens to you, if you have
an advantage, you don’t hoard it.
You share it. You reach out. You
give back.”
What they are both talking
about is whom America belongs
to. And who gets to be a
“suburban housewife.” And who
has to just be a tired, hard-
working mother, looking for a
place to live.
[email protected]Monica Hesse is a columnist writing
about gender and its impact on
society. For more visit wapo.st/
hesse.fearmongering. Three: that his
understanding of women voters
is based on six reruns of “Happy
Days” plus a vacuum cleaner ad
from 1957.
Who are the Suburban
Housewives of America living
their Suburban Lifestyle Dreams
(SHASLD)?
Trump has provided clues
before: “Remember the
dishwasher? You’d press it,
boom! There’d be like an
explosion,” he said at a 2019
Michigan rally. “Now, you press
it 12 times. Women tell me...
you know, they give you four
drops of water.” Setting aside the
fact that dishwashers are not
bombs, Trump would have you
believe that the SHASLD
(pronounced shazzled), given an
audience with the president of
the United States, would use that
time to complain about their
home appliances.
The platonic ideal of a
SHASLD is Donna Reed, star of
the black-and-white pantheon to
domesticity, “The Donna Reed
Show.” We know this because
when the president wanted to
accuse two female journalists of
treating him inappropriately (i.e.
doing their jobs and asking him
questions) he disparaged their
“angry” professionalism by
quipping, “It wasn’t Donna
Reed, I can tell you that.”
Coincidentally, Trump’s tweet
about the endangerment of the
“Suburban Lifestyle” appeared
on the same day as a very
different view of the American
Dream.
On Wednesday, Michelle
Obama debuted her new podcast
— a chatty, virtual coffee hour
whose first guest was her
husband, Barack. For 50
minutes, the former first couple
HESSE FROM C1 discussed their vision of citizens’
“relationship to our
communities and our country”
— which really meant, Michelle
said, exploring “our place in this
world.”
Michelle’s first community
was her working-class nuclear
family, which, Barack teased,
was “the Black ‘Leave it to
Beavers.’ ” Her father, Fraser
Robinson, worked for the city of
Chicago. Her mother, Marian,
looked after the home, the two
children and the neighborhood,
and she volunteered with the
PTA — a collection of picket-
fence tasks that might fit the
president’s job description for a
“housewife.”
Suburban? That’s where it
gets more complicated.
For Black middle-class
families, Michelle said, “the
dream was to move to the
suburbs.” As a child, she’d
fantasized about a house with
two stories — which, in her
young imagination, signified
financial achievement. “ ‘The
Brady Bunch’ had stairs,” she
said. “ ‘The Partridge Family.’ ”
She fantasized about a station
wagon and having her own
bedroom.
Ultimately, though, the
Robinsons never made it to the
suburbs. Her father feared that a
mortgage would make them
house-poor, unable to save for
his children’s education. And
more importantly: “My father
was suspicious of the suburbs
because they still weren’t
completely welcoming.”
Their new neighbors might
be, to use President Trump’s
word, “bothered” by the arrival
of the Robinson family.
There is nothing that makes
Donna Reed’s pursuit of
prosperous domesticity more
American than Marian
MONICA HESSE
Who really gets to be a
‘Suburban Housewife’?
SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES
The platonic ideal of President Trump’s “Suburban Housewives of America” is Donna Reed,
star of the black-and-white pantheon to domesticity, “The Donna Reed Show.”