AMERICA’S GREATEST ENEMY IS THE ENEMEDIA

Who is Alicia Machado?

If you don’t know, don’t feel bad. She’s the most recent example of the “mainstream” media’s determination to talk about anything other than what you want them to report on.

News coverage should focus on “candidates’ policy positions,” say 63 percent in a Huffington Post poll.

You care most about the economy and terrorism, multiple polls indicate. Also “very important to their vote” are foreign policy, health care, gun policy and immigration, say 70 percent or more in a Pew Poll.

Yet we heard more about someone named Alicia Machado than any of these issues in the “reporting” on the first presidential debate.

A native of Venezuela, Ms. Machado was Miss Universe in 1996, a beauty contest sponsored by Donald Trump. He called her “Miss Piggy” after she put on a lot of weight, Hillary Clinton said. We already knew The Donald is a misogynist, but it was good politics for Hillary to remind us.

Within hours, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Cosmopolitan published lengthy profiles of Ms. Machado, with tearful quotes and many photos. It’s as if they knew in advance what Hillary would say, conspired to reinforce her message.

Ms. Machado had a child by drug lord Gerardo Alvarez Vazquez, was accused of driving the getaway car in an attempted murder, threatened to kill a judge.  She also performed live sex on a Spanish reality TV show

The Times, the Post, and Cosmo neglected to mention this. But maybe Hillary should rethink plans to feature her in an ad campaign.

Ms. Machado became a U.S. citizen this year. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to grant citizenship to someone who evidently has strong ties to a drug cartel. But we should be concerned more by the report of the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security Sept. 19.

He said 858 illegal immigrants from terror supporting states who should have been deported were given citizenship instead. The actual number is more than twice as high, reported CNN’s Jake Tapper.

The boo boo happened because many fingerprints taken by the old INS “were not digitized and therefore not available as part of the immigration adjudication process,” DHS said.

DHS isn’t telling the full story, says three GOP Congressmen, who demanded answers to a dozen specific questions. Why are most journalists more interested in Ms. Machado than in the answers to those questions?

The average annual rate of  real GDP) growth during the Obama administration through the second quarter of this year is 1.41 percent and 2.01 percent since the end of the recession. That’s the worst for any two term president, by far the worst “recovery” from any of the 10 recessions since World War II. (The average annual rate of growth during the Reagan administration was 3.5 percent, 4.9 per cent during the recovery from the 1982 recession.)

Hillary plans to double down on Mr. Obama’s economic policies, so it’s understandable why she doesn’t want to talk about this. But the economy is the issue you care about most. Journalists owe readers and viewers truthful, comprehensive reporting on why it is moribund (I bet the 20,000 plus new regulations issued during the Obama administration has a lot to do with it), and should be asking the presidential candidates what they plan to do about it.

Millions of Americans will lose their health coverage this year, or face staggering increases in their insurance premiums. Hillary hasn’t had much to say about this, either. Neither has the “mainstream” media. We’ve learned more from television “news” about Donald Trump’s screwy flirtation with birtherism than about Obamacare’s death spiral.

Paul Farenthold of the Washington Post has done superb reporting on fraud in the Trump Foundation. Why is there no comparable reporting on much greater fraud in the Clinton Foundation?

Journalists are supposed to be watchdogs, keeping a skeptical eye on business, government, and both parties. When so many are lap dogs, we don’t get the information we need to make good choices in the voting booth.

The horrible truth is that today, America’s worst threat to our freedom and prosperity is America’s own so-called mainstream media.  They have earned being called the Enemedia, for they have proven to be America’s #1 enemy.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.