Trump hatred fueled media’s yearlong obsession with Avenatti and Stormy

WaTimes: 2018 was the year the mainstream media willingly handed whatever was left of their credibility and dignity over to an aging porn star/stripper and her odious, ethically challenged attorney.

Night after night, webpage after webpage, social media post after social media post, the American public was inundated with sordid, tawdry details ranging from the size and likeness of President Trump’s phallus to … well … there doesn’t really need to be an outer range of this coverage for you to get the point.

At one point, Mr. Avenatti had become such a fixture on certain cable networks that it almost appeared he had joined the prime-time lineup. Analysts at the Media Research Center categorized his appearances on CNN over a two-month period. The results are as startling as they are embarrassing.

“MRC analysts combed through transcripts of all of CNN’s 2018 coverage looking for references to interviews with Avenatti, and then double-checked using our video archive,” the research center wrote at their Newsbusters website. “Since Avenatti’s first appearance on March 7, he has been interviewed on CNN a whopping 59 times, more than one-third of which (19) were with Anderson Cooper — who, of course, interviewed Stormy Daniels on CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ back in March.”

And don’t fool yourself into thinking that it was just the tawdry cable news outlets that focused on the story because she is an attractive, buxomy pornographic actress (real name Stephanie Clifford) who plays into the tabloid mindset of today’s cable news business.

“Why Trump Should Fear Michael Avenatti More Than Bob Mueller” headlined Politico in May. “Why the Stormy Daniels-Donald Trump story matters” intoned the BBC around the same time. In September, The New York Times opened its revered op-ed pages to Mr. Avenatti so he could convey to the Old Gray Lady’s readers “The Case for Indicting the President,” as his opinion piece was titled.