Rise of outsider candidates reflects uprising against mainstream media

The latest Republican primary debate, hosted by CNBC, provided the clearest evidence yet of how disconnected the mainstream media have become in this country. The debate was full of pointless provocations, irrelevant topics (should the government regulate fantasy football, really?), and loaded “gotcha” interrogation-style questions that bared the media’s consistently liberal bias and their smug disregard for the American voting public.

{mosads}Who can remember ever such a vapid media spectacle as this latest debate? The substance-free nitpicking was probably best evidenced in a series of questions posed to candidate Dr. Ben Carson about his relationship with the Mannatech pharmaceutical company. In a revealing double standard, the moderators at CNBC drudged up a ridiculous accusation of impropriety by Carson — yet the mainstream media never seem to question the glaring conflict of interests involving Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and its foreign government funders. While Carson may have had a passing association with Mannatech (he was paid through a speaker’s bureau for some speeches, but he never endorsed its products and has no current financial relationship with the company), Clinton’s foundation solicits and receives tens of millions of dollars in donations from foreign nations hoping to influence U.S. government policy. Why has no debate moderator questioned Clinton about how her financial ties to the Clinton Foundation posed potential ethical conflicts as the Obama administration’s most senior diplomat for U.S. foreign policy?

Those are the hard, illuminating questions the media should be asking — but because they are so deeply embedded within the liberal establishment, they won’t. The American people are fed up with a media machine that tries to pick their leaders for them by using muckraking, innuendo and selective exposure to try and paint a tawdry picture of their disfavored candidate.

While Wall Street gets rich, corporations enjoy mile-high stock market valuations and media stars get ever wealthier from stoking the fray, the American people are left to muddle through. They find themselves in a situation in which labor force participation is at an all-time low. Despite supposedly low unemployment rates, wage growth has stagnated. College students graduate to six-figure debt and can only find jobs in the retail industry, displacing high-school graduates. Those who lack the credentials to get full-time employment are left to fend for themselves in the so-called “gig economy.” They are underemployed. The cities are facing racial strife, crime and violence born of hopelessness.

And so despite the spin, people know when they are being conned and they are fed up with it. It’s gotten to the point where they just don’t want to hear it anymore. So what — you’ve got experience in Washington? When you were there, what did you do? Why is the country worse off than before you arrived? About the worst thing a politician can say in this election cycle is that he or she has experience in Washington, or even government in general. It immediately taints them with the scarlet “I” for insider.

Make no mistake about it, this is the year of the outsider. Ben Carson and Donald Trump are not going away. Mainstream candidates will not be able to carry this election, despite the best efforts of their friends in the mainstream media. The people are in an uprising against the powers that be, and the uprising won’t be stopped, or muted or coopted as it has been in the past. People want something radically different. It is high time the mainstream media get used to it.

Williams is Dr. Ben Carson’s business manager and adviser. He has no affiliation with Carson’s presidential campaign.