Joel B. Pollak

Priming the Pump
Review of the self-published Amazon Kindle eBook (December, 2020)

I read Neither Free nor Fair as part of my ongoing reading survey of various books in relation to the 2020 American Election. As a Canadian, I’ve generally ignored American politics and elections in past years, but the drama of the situation in 2020 has heightened my interest.

Joel Pollak wrote this book in the space of 2 weeks, following the November 3, 2020 American Election and was able to get it released via Amazon Kindle only a few weeks later, on December 8, 2020. It is thus the first book to be released following Joe Biden’s victory over incumbent President Donald Trump. Since that result there has been a considerable amount of publicity with Trump disputing the voting methods and counting processes. Pollak’s thesis is not about the actual voting though, but is instead about all of the other circumstances leading up to it, which he lays out in his introductory summary:

The international community recognizes a “free and fair” election as one in which the secret ballot is “absolute”; where individuals may “express political opinions without interference”; where voters may “seek, receive and impart information”; and where candidates have “equal opportunity of access to the media.” These standards were violated by the 2020 election.

Pollak is admittedly biased. He is a senior editor-at-large at the conservative media outlet Breitbart News. He does make valid points though about the bias of media in general (mainstream & social), big tech (google, facebook, twitter, etc.), the manipulation of events by opposition parties and political & social activists, to steer public discourse against the incumbent President. Trump of course was his own worst enemy in this regard and did not do himself any favours with his narcissism and arrogance.

The main issue that struck me was the lessons learned by the media from ex-FBI Director James Comey’s mixed messages about Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the 2016 election. It did seem like there was a concerted effort in 2020 to block all hints of scandal about Joe Biden and his family’s possible selling of political influence in the past, so that there would be nothing to taint him as there had been Clinton in 2016. Managing to keep the Hunter Biden lap-top story away from major media outlets by blocking or disabling social media accounts including that by Twitter of the New York Post was the most shocking thing to me as a Canadian observer.

There will obviously be many more journalist books written about the 2020 Election. Pollak has made an excellent summary here of the issues that those accounts should discuss in the future.… (más)

This book is co-written by a journalist who traveled with the Trump campaign as a member of the press covering the campaign, and an historian who studies American politics, and who provided data analysis to that campaign. Between them, they are able to provide an insider's perspective on the campaign. I found the book timely and interesting. As a Canadian, I sometimes wasn't sure about some of the acronyms or geography, but that didn't detract from the story being told. Personally, I was looking for more of an analysis of the "revolution" that brought Mr. Trump to power...this is much more (but not exclusively) a description of events.… (más)