The funny thing about the Biden administration is that it is doing a hell of a lot of things right. But you wouldn’t know it if you listened to just about any media outlet.

Of course the Putin support networks like FOX, OAN, Newmax and other propaganda outfits can be expected to beat their drums in directions that paint Biden and company in the worst possible light. But the problem the administration has isn’t in these shrill misdirectors.

The real problem is that the gains the administration is making, in the face of outright sabotage and obstruction, are simply being ignored, unrecognized or invalidated by the media. And the administration is ignoring that crucial fact.

Here’s a great example pointed out by Heather Cox Richardson in her latest piece:

Under Biden, the U.S. has added more than 400,000 jobs a month for 11 months, the longest period of job growth since at least 1939. And yet, … on the day the latest job report was released, cable news used the word “inflation” as many times as “jobs.” On Sunday, NBC’s “Meet the Press” ignored the economy and instead featured conversations about two problems for the Democrats in the midterms: immigration and Trump.

The fact that “Trump” is still a media lightening rod speaks volumes to the larger issue plaguing the administration. Biden’s people need to realize that media outlets are businesses and can be fairly low-order animals in their basic nature. The phrase “if it bleeds it leads” is unfortunately still the rule of the day. And the messaging coming from Trump and his backers is always bleeding.

The indelible lesson that Trump taught the world is that audacious and unrepentant lies are tools that he and people like him will never fail to use to undermine Democracy.

This does not mean that the Biden administration should fight lies with lies. But it must act to expose each and every instance of these lies for what they are. They must act energetically to put out the correct information. But the top of the bill must be to utterly discredit each and every purveyor of lies.

Discrediting the liars themselves is the most effective way of shutting off the river of slander and propaganda this country faces every day. This should not be hard to do because of the massive amount of evidence of criminality associated with the former administration. For example, also from Heather Cox Richardson:

There have been plenty of stories about the misuse of funds under the Trump administration, including the story on March 28 by Ken Dilanian and Laura Strickler of NBC that prosecutors are calling the distribution of funds under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), designed to keep businesses afloat during the pandemic, “the largest fraud in U.S. history.” As much as 10% of the relief money—$80 billion—was stolen in 2020, as money went out the door without verification checks (the Biden administration has since imposed verification rules). Swindlers also stole $90 billion to $400 billion from the Covid unemployment relief program, and another $80 billion from a different Covid relief program.

The Biden administration has correctly targeted corruption as a focal point for action. And as the example above shows, there has been plenty of corruption to go around under the Trump’s administration.

But with bombshell report after bombshell report about the Trump crime family being brought out by reporters, where are the indictments, arrests and prosecutions from a justice department with vastly greater investigative resources?

And then there is the faction of traitors, still in office, who supported and even participated in the January 6th insurrection. What are these people doing? Attacking and misdirecting and generally propagandizing against our government and democracy in general.

The point? Defending one’s position must be done. No question. But to really win, the attackers themselves need to be forced into a defensive posture.

No public relations war, and this is what the Biden’s administration is engaged in, is ever won by defense only. The dissemination of factual information must occur simultaneously with offensive revelations that expose the propaganda sources, who they are and who they work for and why.

Here’s the biggest clue to work with: the messaging coming from the Trump faction of the Republican Party—which is most of it—is very similar if not identical to messaging coming from Putin. This “coincidence” needs to be thoroughly investigated.

The biggest failure of the Biden administration would be a failure to get to the bottom of this. The stakes? Our country, our way of government, and Democracy itself.