Media

Media must demand Clinton disavow Dean’s cocaine comments

by Joe Concha, contributor - 09/28/16 8:23 AM ET

Some free advice to anyone who scores an interview with Hillary Clinton, a member of the Clinton campaign or a Clinton surrogate:

Your first question — given the new David Duke rule of journalism set forth on countless occasions during this campaign — should be the following:

{mosads}”The former head of the DNC and MSNBC contributor Howard Dean has suggested the possibility that Donald Trump uses cocaine and even may have done so before a presidential debate on Monday night. Would you describe him as deplorable and do you denounce those comments?”

If that question is ever asked, then the Cleveland Browns are a shoe-in to make the playoffs. In a related story, the Brownies are 0-3 and haven’t qualified for the postseason since Dean was running the Democratic National Committee in 2003.

This is what it comes down to now: baseless accusations about freebasing. At first, it seemed Dean may have only been making a joke on Twitter during the debate on Monday night as Trump sniffled his way through. But yesterday on MSNBC in an interview with Kate Snow, who opened the interview by playing a montage of Trump sniffles, he quadrupled down and then some…

“He (Trump) sniffs during the presentation, which is something users do,” explained Dean, who ironically holds a medical degree from Albert Einstein College.

“Do I think he has a cocaine problem at 70 years old? Dean asked. “Probably not, (chuckles sarcastically). But it’s something interesting to be ask him to see if he ever had a problem with that.”

Never once during the interview is it mentioned that Trump has never indulged in alcohol, nor is anything broached about his time being front and center in the New York tabloids, where facts are often trumped by fiction in the form of ridiculous rumors. And in 40 years under that sensational microscope, even the New York Daily News or New York Post ever even remotely went the Trump-is-doing-lines-in-the-bathroom-at-the-Palladium-route.

Upon going through examples of Trump suffering from delusion, which is said is common among cocaine users, Dean proceeded to make this delusional statement of his own.

“I don’t make any diagnosis over the television. I don’t. I think that’s wrong. Doctors do it. I don’t they should do it,” Dean declared, after, you know, doing it.

Snow then pivoted of Dean’s accusation reminding her of an example of Rudy Giuliani — a Trump surrogate — making similar accusations about the medical history of Hillary Clinton, pointing out that Dean and others condemning such rhetoric as inappropriate due to having no substance or proof.

Snow then asked what Dean would say if a Trump supporter accused Clinton of using drugs before the debate.

“I suspect she would have said, ‘No I’m not and here’s my medical report to prove it,’ Dean argued before accusing Trump of not having the same transparency over his medical history.

The “medical report” Clinton provided that Dean is referring to was a six-paragraph letter from September 18th basically underlining her pneumonia diagnosis and the medications she’s taken. Trump provided a similar general overview — nothing that could be confused with medical records that were as long as more than 1,000 pages in the case of John McCain presidential run — a few days earlier.

All told, Dean said the word “cocaine” six times in a national TV interview based on nothing.

For those that say Trump surrogates engaged in the same activity around Clinton’s health, the difference there was her documented history of having blood clots, including one on the brain, having suffered a concussion that required a six-month recovery, having been prescribed Coumadin, having been told by many doctors — including the president’s own physician of more than two decades in August — to get a neurological exam. And then there was the collapse at a 9/11 memorial ceremony that validated those concerns.

Will this result in any disciplinary action by the network? Of course not.

Will reporters or anchors or cable news hosts do their job — which they so aggressively did in asking Trump or anyone associated with him to answer for everything David Duke says in supporting the Republican nominee — by asking the Clinton camp or the candidate herself if they condemn Dean’s delusional remarks?

You’d have to be high as a kite to answer yes on that last question.

Concha is a media reporter for The Hill.

The views of Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.