Trump could be stopped — if these watchdogs just did their jobs
Editors of newspapers like to say that they cover the newsworthy events “without fear or favor.” Sure. But how can they cover events without the requisite curiosity, without deeply feeling for the public’s right to know, and without breaking through their “comfort zone”?
Maybe you can help explain the following examples of editors and reporters going AWOL and suggest how they could overcome their jaded inaction.
1. You’ll recall the criminal enterprise, led by felon Elon Musk, in 2025 called “The Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE. Trickster Trump allowed Musk to rampage through one government agency after another. In fact, DOGE ushered in a regime that set records in government waste yet received insufficient media attention. By shuttering, dismantling, or closing programs and whole agencies serving people’s needs—health, safety, and economic support and protections—the Musk-Trump DOGE left crumbling agencies doing little or nothing with hamstrung staff.
There is sprawling corruption and waste inside the government, causing devastating and real waste by not preventing sicknesses and injuries, and forcing consumers deeper into personal debt for necessities such as healthcare, housing, food, and transportation.
With declining polls and rising majorities of Americans wanting Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office, more civic power, that is laser-focused on Congress and receives mass media, is needed.
Since DOGE began to wind down last summer, after Musk exited as a hyper-wealthy fugitive from justice, there have been no thorough investigations by Congress nor by the inspectors general, most of whom President Donald Trump illegally fired very early on in his dictatorial regime.
Not a day goes by without Trump unilaterally wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on his White House ballroom, on further larding runaway Pentagon spending. Wasteful and unnecessary military attacks, and the firing of government auditors, watchdogs, irreplaceable experienced managers, and first responders to disasters all contribute to freezing vital government services.
2. Why has the media not covered the legislative drive in New York’s state legislature to end the 45-year-long rebate of a tiny sales tax on stock transactions? Minimally estimated at $15 billion a year collected and electronically rebated back to the brokers, the bill S01237-A allocates the revenues to mass transit, education, healthcare, and the environment (visit greedvsneed.org for more information on the campaign to pass this legislation). Two years ago, the sponsoring lawmakers led a demonstration before the New York Stock Exchange building. No coverage. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani needs this money for his people-serving programs, yet he has been totally silent about ending the rebate. No reporters are asking him why?
Over the last eight years, I have spoken to seven reporters and two business editors, who say that it is a good story, recently made better by Mamdani not speaking out about this proposal. The journalists said they would get back to me. None have. That’s not indifference from the top; that’s silent censorship! Only the Amsterdam News wrote a long feature on this topic. The rest of the New York City media balked. Shame on The New York Times and the New York City daily newspapers.
3. The vast death undercount in Gaza (over 600,000, not the reported 75,200) is explained away by both the mainstream and independent media. Reporters say they have no reliable estimate of the enormous death toll. Nonsense. Dig in and investigate! Various disaster casualty specialists have estimated deaths at hundreds of thousands resulting directly from Israeli military genocidal violence and indirectly from the related absence of food, water, healthcare, medicine, fuel, and electricity, blocked by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. One expert on bombing casualties, professor emeritus Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford in the UK, calculated that the TNT volume of Israel’s bombs, missiles, and artillery was the equivalent of six or more Hiroshima atomic bombs and more devastating because of today’s precision targeting of this tiny enclave of crowded, defenseless civilians.
What other ethnic group would have its death toll underestimated by nearly 90%? (See my March 28, 2025 column “The Vast Gaza Death Undercount—Undermines Civic, Diplomatic, and Political Pressures” and my February 21, 2025 column “Stop Repeating the Vast Undercount of Gazan Deaths. It Is Ten Times Greater.” Also see “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount” in the August-September 2024 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen.) A more accurate estimate matters morally and intensifies the political, diplomatic, and civic pressure to stop the killing and to compel the Israeli regime to fully allow sufficient humanitarian aid into Gaza to help the starved, sick, and dying in this ravaged land. (See Dr. Feroze Sidhwa’s report, “The Truth About Gaza’s Dead”). The calculating media plays dumb.
4. The Democrats on Capitol Hill have been very willing to oust their colleagues accused of sexual harassment or assault. Pushed out were Congressman John Conyers in 2017, Senator Al Franken in 2018, and Congressman Eric Swalwell in 2026.
Yet when it comes to the far greater order of magnitude of offenses by the craven, sadistic, sexual abuser of women (over 60 women have dared to provide credible experiences of Trump’s abuses, and one woman has won a tort lawsuit against him). Since 2016, the congressional Democrats have largely looked away.
In early 2020, I delivered personally to over 100 Democratic members of Congress, most of them women, a lengthy letter detailing the case for congressional hearings on Trump’s felonious aggressions (See the OPEN LETTER TO THE WOMEN IN CONGRESS, February 24, 2020). I met staff who agreed that some action was necessary, but said it was up to Speaker Nancy Pelosi or that hearings would have little impact on Teflon Trump and be ineffective. Suffice it to say that only two members of Congress formally acknowledged receipt of the letter without comment. The rest ignored the letter, as did several women’s groups known for focusing on sexual harassment and assault against women. No media coverage. No interest at all in this contradiction by reporters. Read the letter; your observations are welcome.
5. With declining polls and rising majorities of Americans wanting Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office, more civic power, that is laser-focused on Congress and receives mass media, is needed. Fast-rising tides could occur were the retired presidents, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even G.W. Bush, to come out of their luxurious lairs and mobilize pressure to impeach Trump. The serious entry into this struggle to save the Republic and the Constitution for which it stands would electrify the mainstream media and the frustrated citizenry. Such an effort could quickly and easily attract the requisite funds needed to mobilize such an effort to every congressional district. Feeling the heat, Democrats in Congress would commence publicizing “shadow hearings” and further splinter the once iron-clad sycophancy for Trump by the GOP, who are terrified by their prospects in November.
Trump himself daily provides more vivid evidence of impeachable offenses. (See, H.Res. 1155). He can’t help himself, believing he can continue to get away with everything he does, no matter how extreme.
We know why there is reluctance by the ex-presidents. They would be assailed by Trump and the Trumpsters. They would be accused of having committed many of the same or similar crimes when they were in the White House. True for G.W. Bush in Iraq and Joe Biden in Gaza, for starters. However, this is an occasion for declared regrets and redemption as they pursue the removal from office of Donald Trump, a dangerously unstable, megalomaniacal tyrant who is perilously wrecking, endangering, and weakening our country. MOREOVER, WITH TRUMP, THE WORSE IS YET TO COME, MUCH WORSE AND SOON.
Do the former presidents want to stay on the sidelines and have their inaction on their conscience for historians to record? The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said wisely: “Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events.”
Why don’t the reporters ask the former presidents the obvious questions? How about some editorials? Or op-eds?
