If you doubt that our elitist media are a powerful component in the Democrat Party messaging machine, see what happened to Rep. Eric Swalwell of California. His career collapsed. Within about 48 hours, he went from the leading Democrat in a very fragmented field for governor of the Golden State to an exit ramp out of Congress.
It was a conservative pouncing party when CNN media reporter Brian Stelter touted Swalwell's sudden misfortune as a "real testament to the power of investigative reporting." Assembling a set of damning allegations of sexual assault certainly looks like investigative reporting. But the assembly can often look remarkably organized and timed for political effect.
In this case, California Democrats have been growing increasingly panicked at the polls in their "jungle primary" for governor -- where the top two vote-getters (regardless of party) advance to a general-election runoff. It had become disastrously possible that the top two could both be Republicans -- Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. Democrats needed to shrink their field of candidates. So, voila, "investigative reporting" dropped a bomb on Swalwell -- from the liberal San Francisco Chronicle and liberal CNN.
That's not to say that Swalwell's accusers don't have deeply disturbing facts on their side. It's all about the remarkable timing. Swalwell ran for president in 2020, which would have been an obvious occasion for investigative reporting, even if Swalwell wasn't exactly a front-runner in that cycle. Swalwell was one of many Democrats that CNN rewarded with a primetime "town hall" program for national publicity.
It reminded me of the early months of the 2011-12 presidential primaries on the Republican side. They started with Sarah Palin, who never even proclaimed her candidacy. NBC ran with wild allegations from leftist author Joe McGinniss that Palin and her then-husband had used cocaine, and he claimed Palin slept with NBA star Glen Rice when she was a sports reporter in Anchorage.
From there, every Republican who briefly rose to the top of the GOP primary polls suddenly found themselves pummeled by "the power of investigative reporting." President Barack Obama rested comfortably while all these bombshells were put on an assembly line. The elitist media pretended Obama's only scandal was wearing a tan suit into the White House Briefing Room.
Michele Bachmann and her husband were trying to make gay people straight. Rick Perry bought a hunting property that had a rock with the "N word" on it, which Perry painted over. Herman Cain settled sex harassment lawsuits. Newt Gingrich's ex-wife said he asked for an "open marriage." Rick Santorum's wife had dated an abortionist before they were married. They waited until the primary season ended to gang up on Mitt Romney, the eventual nominee.
For most of 2026, Swalwell was the toast of cable news. Nick Fondacaro at NewsBusters found he made 50 appearances on CNN and MS NOW combined as an anti-Trump warrior -- until it was time to drive him out of office. He even struck feminist poses. In January, he told MS NOW host Jen Psaki that if elected as governor, he would take away the driver's licenses of ICE agents because they've "terrorized women."
The video retweets were brutal. Just last year, Swalwell showed himself wearing a "No Kings" protest shirt, bragging to a bunch of supporters that he'd come up with a new Democrat Party campaign slogan: "It'll All Come Out."
Then it did. He didn't see the train coming until it hit him. As Warren Squire joked on Twitchy: "He's not a holy man, but he's getting what he wholly deserves."
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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