Mainstream media suddenly silent on Kerry and Iran relationship after tape dump defines post-Trump press
April 30, 2021
It’s been four days since the New York Times ran a story about tape recordings from Iran’s foreign minister that say that when John Kerry was secretary of state under Obama, he disclosed sensitive or perhaps classified information with Iran about an ally.
And it’s been four days of silence about the scandal by the big media wheels.
The leaked tapes from the Times’s reveal Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif saying that Kerry told him that Israel was behind 200 attacks on Iranian interests in Syria.
And despite widespread outrage and calls from both the GOP and the military for Kerry to either be investigated or resign, ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC have yet to run a story about the revelations.
Instead, the story has been met by silence, at least by the major TV media.
“There’s been a widespread blackout in media coverage of the growing controversy surrounding Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry over his alleged sharing of Israeli intel with Iran,” Fox charged just one day after the Times story was published.
“I don’t do this lightly. In my entire time in the Senate, I’ve never called for anyone’s resignation,” Republican Senator from Alaska, Dan Sullivan said according to the HIll. “But his record, John Kerry’s record, of undermining working families and working against American national security interests was too much to bear. He needs to go.”
In fact, as Sullivan alludes, it’s not the first time that Kerry has been charged with unethical or illegal activity with Iran on foreign policy.
In 2019, President Trump charged that Kerry, then a private citizen, violated the Logan Act, a law designed to prevent private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in contravention to US foreign policy.
At issue then, as now, was what Kerry disclosed to Iran while consulting with the Iranian government as a private citizen– even as the Trump administration was negotiating with Iran about Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Previously, Kerry had negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran that under the Obama administration was imposed by executive order, because the administration could not get it approved by the Senate, as required by law.
Kerry was anxious, then, to keep that agreement in place, just as Trump had decided to dump it.
“Iran is being given VERY BAD advice by @JohnKerry and people who helped him lead the U.S. into the very bad Iran Nuclear Deal,” Tump tweeted. “Big violation of Logan Act?”
Like a lot of things Trump did, the tweet caused the media to go into rapid reaction mode as an extension of the Democrat National Committees press operation to protect Kerry.
The Trump charges were met with denials.
ABC, CBS and MSNBC each ran cover for Kerry at the time of the Trump Logan Act tweet, with quotes from Iranian sources denying that Kerry ever broached the subject of how to negotiate against the Trump administration– thus Kerry could not have possibly violated the Logan Act.
CNN was so rattled by the charges that it ran the ultimate homage to the Trump Logan Act accusations by publishing the liberal equivalent of a peer-reviewed research study, the fact-check to help protect Kerry.
Today, however, with Trump deprived of his media platform, the mainstream press realizes that if they just keep silent, the story will go away on its own.
So, it remains mute on the subject.
It’s how the press dealt with the Hunter Biden story; it’s how they dealt with Biden hiding in the White House basement and; it’s how increasingly out-of-touch regimes, like today’s press, act to keep their sanity.