BANKOLE THOMPSON (HOST): Let me get your take about how you feel about the media's covering of the election so far.
ERIC BOEHLERT: Oh my gosh, that's a big question. I think my main complaint, the main media complaint for Media Matters is trying to pretend that Trump and Clinton are equal. Trying to pretend they both have similar policies. Both, trying to pretend they're both equally transparent. I would argue that Trump has broken or ignored virtually all the rules and protocols of the campaign. But for some reason the press seems really interested in pretending they're just opposites of each other. They're just mirror opposites. And they're not. And it's causing more and more problems for the press, I think, as they try to bend over and try to pretend this campaign is something that it's not.
THOMPSON: Let me ask you this. Because -- and I ask the question with this in mind. Newsweek magazine just did an in-depth, well-researched story today on the cover, and I read it during the first two segments of this program, at the top of the hour. Read excepts of the story itself. Very detailed, very meticulous. They brought in information that we did not even know. They went to South Korea and all these other places. My issue here is, why isn't the cable networks that have all these resources, why aren't they doing the same thing?
BOEHLERT: That's a great question. And the equally frustrating question is why, my hunch is this Newsweek story is not going to be a big deal. And every time we get sort of these startling, amazing revelations -- and the Newsweek story is basically detailing that if Trump becomes president, the foreign policy, the US foreign policy absolutely will be for sale, whether for China or Russia or all of his business practices. It's an unprecedented entanglement in terms of conflict of interest. This is the same press that has been fainting over the Clinton Foundation, which is a charity. New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe all writing editorials saying the Clintons had to shut down this charity. None of them have written editorials about A, the Trump Foundation, which is the more we hear about it, seems to to be basically a fraudulent entity. And we certainly, no suggestions that Trump needs to shut down his businesses because there will be too many conflicts of interest.
