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Quick 🧵thread🧵
With the news that Walz’s reelection campaign won’t survive the spiraling child care center fraud scandal in his state, I wanted to reup some of the worst legacy media efforts to put lipstick on this particular pig.
Follow along: ⤵️

I have to start with @nytimes, who seemed positively incensed that a video from @nickshirleyy caught fire, accusing him of being “in search of politically charged footage,” while burying whether there were any kids at these child care centers in the first place.

This from the same @nytimes who a few weeks ago wrote an extensive piece about “how fraud swamped Minnesota’s social services system on Tim Walz’s watch.”
But now, it was just the video that caused this?
C’mon.

But there were more awful defenses of these child care centers that receive millions of taxpayer dollars.
Here’s @AP relying on the head of the now-famous (and allegedly closed) “ABC Learning Center” to suggest this criticism is “a political Campari against Somali Minnesotans.”

(Speaking of flashbacks, probably no surprise that a month ago @AP ran a piece quoting a Somali community activist in Minnesota urging people to “look at what we did around here.”
It seems people did.)

But what really got me was outlets parroting claims from the Minnesota government that alleged child care centers were “working as they should” despite half of them actively being under state investigation.
@NBCNews, is the presence of “ongoing investigations” really “normal”?

You might think this kind of defense was a one off.
But it wasn’t. Here’s a headline from @CNN doing the same.
Just quoting a government statement without interrogation is not journalism. It’s propaganda.

Again, outlets like @CBSNews just parroted the Minnesota government that may be overseeing a massive fraud scandal and called it news.

But @StarTribune did one better, going to the child care centers that @nickshirleyy went to, finding evidence that fewer than half of them were doing what they said they were to receive millions in taxpayer subsidies, and claiming that was evidence that…the video was bogus?

There were other bizarre elements of this.
Billions of dollars in alleged fraud and @NPR is focused instead on the “threats” facing the alleged fraudsters — at least some of which appear to be invented.

Apparently, at @CNN, if the potential fraudsters and the government potentially supporting them say there’s no fraud, there’s no fraud. (H/t @CurtisHouck)

And of course, there was plenty of shooting-the-messenger, @nickshirleyy, who they dub a “MAGA journalist.”
Here’s @CNN lamenting that he lacked the “fact checks and guardrails” that legacy media rely on.
Maybe those were effective in ensuring this scandal wasn’t uncovered.

But we saw the same thing from @NPR.
Supposedly he had a “lack of evidence” and — richest of all — was “an ‘independent journalist’ with an agenda.”
A truism: when the legacy press can’t win an argument on the merits, the target shifts to the messenger.

When the cycle of coverage moved on to the mourning phase, @CBSNews lamented that Minnesota allegedly “lacked the teeth” to hold fraudsters accountable.
Given the billions of dollars available for the stealing, I doubt that.

But the final phase of the cycle was the most predictable (if bizarre): it’s Republicans fault, says @atrupar, citing…a Republican governor from over a decade ago.

The news cycle seems to be moving faster than ever, but let’s not lose the memory of how the legacy media reliably rush in as firefighters whenever a Democratic interest goes up in flames.

Worth remembering that this kind of disaster was made possible by failed Biden admin policy, specifically giving the green light to hand out millions of taxpayer dollars sight-unseen to nonprofits (or any place alleging to be a nonprofit).

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