We’ve been down this road before: A Democrat wins the presidency and, suddenly, liberals check their consciences at the door of the White House.
Within a year of taking office, Barack Obama began a major surge of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, initiated a secret air war in Yemen, and radically expanded drone strikes across the world. He waged an unprecedented campaign against whistleblowers and used the Espionage Act as a cudgel to silence leaks about the U.S. government’s dirty deeds.
Instead of protesting, most Democrats fell silent. And that’s already happening again. Get ready to hear a constant refrain of “but he is better than Trump” used to insulate Joe Biden from hard-hitting journalism.
At The Intercept, we reject that framing. Powerful officials should never be held to low standards based on the actions of their predecessors. They need to be judged on their own policies and endeavors.
The Intercept’s journalists were on the lonely front lines of reporting on the wars, abuses, and excesses of the Obama presidency. Under a Biden administration, our journalism will be needed more than ever.
To hire more reporters, launch more investigations, and expand our foreign coverage, we’ve set an aggressive year-end fundraising goal. But with less than two days left in 2020, we’re still $400,000 short.
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Now that Donald Trump is on his way out (whether he admits it or not), we cannot afford to look the other way as Biden assembles a team of hawkish officials who were the architects of some of the most dangerous policies of the Obama era.
But, just like they did with Obama, the corporate media is already treating the Biden transition with kid gloves. Remember when an Obama speech sent a thrill up Chris Matthews’s leg? Well, one senior journalist has already lavished praise on Biden’s Cabinet nominees and called them “humble” and “lifelong servants.”
Journalists are supposed to hold the powerful accountable, not cheerlead for a political party. And that’s exactly why we founded The Intercept.
Over the past four years, powerful Democrats constantly told us that Trump was a grave danger to our democratic process, that he was being controlled by a hostile foreign power. Yet, at the same time, they teamed up with neoconservatives and other Republicans to pass record-shattering military budgets and bestow Trump with sweeping surveillance powers.
Thank you,
