...and can't seem to come up with an answer, in the end comparing Trump's victory to Pearl Harbor and the Civil War! I read some of the reviews of this documentary before writing my own, something I tend not to do, and I was genuinely puzzled at the claims of bias as I watched the first half, the part about Trump's rise to victory in the GOP presidential primaries to become the presidential nominee of that party. It does a very good job of compressing that 15 month period from Trump's announcement of his campaign to the convention and the mystified nature of the moneyed and anointed insider candidates who could not believe that this man who had never held any elected office in his life was pulling their base out from underneath them. Only Bernie Sanders, an anti-establishment candidate from the other side of the aisle, seemed to have any wisdom on the subject.
And THEN comes the general election campaign. And somehow all objectivity is lost. Every scandal and misstep of the Trump campaign is examined in minute detail. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton is portrayed as the 30 year public servant with common sense who is unfairly struck down by FBI director James Comey who decides to try her sins in public and by the hacking of private American emails by Russia, a country whose head, Vladimir Putin, had said he preferred that Trump win. Never is it mentioned that the leaked emails showed a clear conspiracy of the media and the DNC with the Clinton campaign to deep six Bernie Sanders' candidacy and crown Hillary the nominee. Never are the security clearance infractions that Clinton committed that made it possible for Comey to impugn her integrity in the first place ever discussed. And not one word about how Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the DNC at the time of the sabotage of the Sanders campaign, was basically met by eggs and tomatoes by Sanders supporters at the DNC convention and had to resign her post.
The cherry on top is the alleged "unbiased interviewer", Mark Halperin, following the campaigns around, showing up on Colbert's election night special - this was NOT a Trump love fest, I watched it - and agreeing with Colbert and his other guests that Trump's victory is a national calamity. Unbiased indeed.
At least in the end one of the interviewers - I don't remember who - may not have "gotten it" but at least uttered words that indicated he did. He said that 2016 was a year of unbridled anger for voters from both parties. The Democrats messed up when they served up the same old boring solutions that all of the insiders had been serving up for the past 20 years with falling wages and rising costs for the voters, and windfalls for the bankers and insiders that took their jobs all the while saying let them eat cake. The voters looked at the establishment candidate and they looked at Trump and thought they could either repeat what had been giving their personal finances a downward spiral or blow up Washington DC and let the chips fall where they may. They chose the second option. Maybe Bernie Sanders can explain this to them sometime.
Forgive me for pontificating in the last paragraph, but since the documentary did quite a bit of it I really don't see the problem.
And THEN comes the general election campaign. And somehow all objectivity is lost. Every scandal and misstep of the Trump campaign is examined in minute detail. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton is portrayed as the 30 year public servant with common sense who is unfairly struck down by FBI director James Comey who decides to try her sins in public and by the hacking of private American emails by Russia, a country whose head, Vladimir Putin, had said he preferred that Trump win. Never is it mentioned that the leaked emails showed a clear conspiracy of the media and the DNC with the Clinton campaign to deep six Bernie Sanders' candidacy and crown Hillary the nominee. Never are the security clearance infractions that Clinton committed that made it possible for Comey to impugn her integrity in the first place ever discussed. And not one word about how Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the DNC at the time of the sabotage of the Sanders campaign, was basically met by eggs and tomatoes by Sanders supporters at the DNC convention and had to resign her post.
The cherry on top is the alleged "unbiased interviewer", Mark Halperin, following the campaigns around, showing up on Colbert's election night special - this was NOT a Trump love fest, I watched it - and agreeing with Colbert and his other guests that Trump's victory is a national calamity. Unbiased indeed.
At least in the end one of the interviewers - I don't remember who - may not have "gotten it" but at least uttered words that indicated he did. He said that 2016 was a year of unbridled anger for voters from both parties. The Democrats messed up when they served up the same old boring solutions that all of the insiders had been serving up for the past 20 years with falling wages and rising costs for the voters, and windfalls for the bankers and insiders that took their jobs all the while saying let them eat cake. The voters looked at the establishment candidate and they looked at Trump and thought they could either repeat what had been giving their personal finances a downward spiral or blow up Washington DC and let the chips fall where they may. They chose the second option. Maybe Bernie Sanders can explain this to them sometime.
Forgive me for pontificating in the last paragraph, but since the documentary did quite a bit of it I really don't see the problem.