Hiding what they did and what they have become

Andrew Klavan writes at PJ Media,

The resignation of White House staff secretary Rob Porter is a big scandal because Democrats and their news media are pumping it up to distract the public from the truly enormous scandal of the Obama administration's apparent illegal spying on the Trump campaign and its apparent scuttling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. There is some reason to expect that this strategy — like many another Democrat attack on Trump — is going to blow up in the attackers' faces.

Porter resigned after two of his ex-wives alleged that he beat them. Porter denies the allegations. If the charges are true, it is certainly a scandal, but a minor one. Unlike the Obama administration's widespread corruption, it does not make the people more or less free. It does not make us richer or poorer. It does not make us safer or less safe. It's a competence foul-up. They happen.

But as I was flying back to Los Angeles from Washington, D.C. the other day, I found myself flicking back and forth between conservative Fox News and leftist CNN for an hour or so. Fox covered the budget negotiations. CNN covered Rob Porter. Fox covered the Obama spying scandal. CNN covered Rob Porter. Fox covered Rob Porter. CNN covered Rob Porter. Fox covered the war in Syria. CNN covered Rob Porter. And on and on. On CNN, it was Rob Porter all night long.

The Porter scandal has a lot to offer the left. If they bring enough pressure and the president is foolish enough, it might cost Chief of Staff John Kelly his job. Kelly has done a lot to bring order to this chaotic White House. The left would love to see him go. The scandal also helps Democrats sell their narrative that Trump is anti-woman. No doubt Trump's demeanor and past behavior offend many women and that's too bad. But women's lives and the state of the union are both better off under his administration. The left needs to keep women outraged and gullible to hide that inconvenient truth.

But most of all, the little Porter scandal is something to cover while covering up the slowly leaking story of an Obama administration that used the levers of power — the IRS, the State Department, the Department of Justice and the FBI — as weapons against its political opponents, as well as the connected scandal of a press so biased that it turned a blind eye to what Obama was doing.

So far it seems the public isn't buying the news media's attempt to cover its own and Obama's wrongdoing. A new IDB/TPP poll shows that 55% of those polled feel it is "likely" that the Obama administration "improperly surveilled the Trump campaign during the 2016 election." Fifty-four percent want a special counsel to investigate.

And this could get worse for the Democrats and their press. One of Porter's ex-wives says she told the FBI about Porter's physical abuse during their security clearance investigation of the man. If that's true, it raises the question: Who leaked these allegations to the press? If it was the FBI, were they running their own attempt to distract the public from their apparent malfeasance during Trump's campaign? And did the FBI tell John Kelly about the allegations and, if not, why not?

Many in our mainstream press have been biased to the point of corruption for a long time. They attempted to spike the Monica Lewinksi scandal to protect Bill Clinton. They attempted to frame George W. Bush with fake documents. But even that level of bias is not as bad as what happened next. Their desire to hide the deep corruption of the Chicago-like Obama machine led the press down a dark path into willful blindness and now actual cover-up.

Rather than reform themselves, our journalists will do anything in their power to hide what they did and what they've become. That's why they're pushing the Porter scandal so hard.