“Give (one) enough rope, and (one) will hang (one)self.”
Donald Trump’s alleged war with the press has been widely assailed in the mainstream media. Newsweek called it “dangerous.” The Daily Beast calls it “anti-American.” SE Cupp opined that it’s the stuff of dictators:
Look, you know, I was talking to Cokie Roberts, a veteran journalist, about this recently, and she said, look, the media doesn’t need to be popular. That’s not our job. And so we shouldn’t necessarily worry about popularity or our approval in the polls.
But the poll that you talked about is trust, and that should matter to the media. So, when Donald Trump villainizes the press writ large, that’s dangerous. It’s not dangerous because it hurts our feelings. It’s not dangerous because you know, people dislike us.
It’s dangerous because it undermines the real importance of this pillar of democracy — a strong, credible free press. So, and he does it with lots of different institutions to try to undermine the trust in them, so that he is the only entity that is trusted by the public.
It’s the popular dictator tactic, frankly, not to sound, you know, overly dramatic. It is what people do. But with particular attention to the press, he is really trying to erode trust, and it seems to be working.
Is that a fair statement? Let’s have a look at some recent media articles.
During Tuesday morning’s broadcast of MSNBC Live, MSNBC Senior National Correspondent Chris Jansing and anchor Ayman Mohyeldin brought on The Nation’s Sports Editor Dave Zirin to argue that President Trump’s attacks on NFL players protesting the National Anthem earlier this year was actually a campaign of “open, ugly racism” that was deliberately aimed at discouraging black athletes from expressing their political opinions.
Last week, Zirin published a column for The Nation that made pretty much the same case, lambasting “Donald Trump, Fox News, and their neo-Nazi-infused right-wing echo chamber” for spending “a year frothing with rabid barbarism” to shut down the voices of black athletes. Jansing and Mohyeldin promoted Zirin’s piece as both “thought-provoking” and “absolutely brilliant,” but failed to correct him as he repeatedly spread blatant misinformation on the air to support his talking points.
Newsweek: ‘How Trump and the Nazis Stole Christmas To Promote White Nationalism’
Trump isn’t the first political figure in history to co-opt Christmas. In fact, some see parallels between Trump’s speeches in front of Christmas trees and attempts by authoritarian regimes like the Nazis to manipulate popular celebrations to promote a political ideology. But by weaponizing Christmas in this way, Trump is bringing a dangerous tradition of politicizing religious holidays into the United States, experts say.
….
….Meanwhile, members of the religious right support Trump’s most nationalist, race-baiting form of political rhetoric, including his re-claiming of Christmas.
Likewise, Nazi Germany’s propagandists rooted their idea of Christmas in visions of ethno-nationalism….
NYT’s Hess Channels Trump’s Clenched Fist: ‘Look What My Whiteness Allows Me to Get Away With’
When I see the photograph of Donald Trump holding a fist in the air on Inauguration Day, I think first of Twitter. By the time the photo arrived on my feed, it was already encrusted with commentary from people racing to ascribe meaning to the first moments of the Trump presidency. First: Was he doing … the Black Power salute? And if so, what did that mean? Was he clueless? Racist? Or funny? To those who heralded our new president as the ultimate political jester, the pose was a triumph. To others, it was a menacing taunt to his predecessor: Look what my whiteness allows me to get away with.
None of that sounds remotely rational or unbiased. CNN still just can’t help itself:
CNN Reporter Falsely Claims Republicans Funded Trump-Russia Dossier
CNN justice correspondent Evan Perez falsely told his network’s viewers on Tuesday that anti-Trump Republicans first funded the infamous Trump-Russia dossier, much of which remains unverified.
Perez was responding to a tweet from President Donald Trump, who called the dossier a “pile of garbage.” Perez has close ties to the cofounders of Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier, which CNN failed to disclose.
“Look, the fact is that the dossier was compiled as part of opposition research, first paid for by Republicans who were opposed to Donald Trump and then later on by Democrats and the Clinton camp, people associated with the Clinton campaign who wanted to try to bring him down,” Perez said.
That “fact” cited by Perez — that anti-Trump Republicans originally funded the dossier — has been ruled “false” by fact-checkers.
Newsweek is vicious, not just to Trump but to Melania as well
Newsweek published a misleading headline on Tuesday that claimed First Lady Melania Trump demanded a historic Jackson magnolia tree be removed from the White House grounds, but it failed to mention that experts recommended the tree’s removal because it could fall down at any moment.
“Melania Trump orders removal of the near-200-year-old tree from the White House,” Newsweek tweeted from its verified Twitter account. The same text is used as the headline for the story, which is essentially fake news and paints Melania Trump as a tree-hating villain.
The First Lady did order the historic tree to be removed, but only after specialists determined that it needed to be removed. The tree has long been supported by poles and wires and posed a hazard for anyone standing near it.
And the rest of gang piled on:
Misleading. Wrong. Typical of the left wing press. Ready, shoot, aim.
It’s not Trump. The press is killing itself. They have declared war on Trump, and Trump is merely giving them the rope with which they hang themselves. The war on Trump began nearly a year ago:
The Washington Post’s media columnist predicts that “Trump’s reign will probably be awash in investigations of investigations and prosecutions of journalists for doing their jobs” — never mind that President Obama has been doing precisely that.
The New York Times ran a front-page opinion piece declaring that with a “demagogue” in the White House, “you have to throw out the textbook” and “move closer” than ever “to being oppositional.”
Jack Shafer, Politico’s senior media writer, called on reporters “to start thinking of covering Trump’s Washington like a war zone.” More: “It’s time to circle behind enemy lines.”
And the editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, presuming to speak for the entire press corps, penned an open letter basically telling Trump, We make the rules, and We’ll call out your lies, repeatedly.
The press openly planning to treat the president of the United States as the enemy? Tragic — but all too predictable.
The liberal media ignores Trump’s great economy and his foreign policy victories, including the destruction of ISIS and it ignores obama’s collusion with Iran in shutting down an FBI investigation. Press coverage of Trump is three times more negative than for obama. More liberal media foibles can be seen here. And we can’t leave out these quotes from “unbiased news people.”
“I think people are finally starting to come to grips – as we must come to grips – with the notion that we have a dangerous individual in the Oval Office who is a national security threat, and he needs to be removed from office….He’s unfit, and he needs to be removed.”
— MSNBC political analyst Ron Reagan Jr. on MSNBC’s Hardball, May 22.“We haven’t had a president this psychologically troubled – I’m trying to use my language real carefully. We haven’t had a president this psychologically troubled in this way since at least Richard Nixon.”
— Disgraced former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, June 1.“This piece of shit is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind.”
— June 3 tweet by former CNN host Reza Aslan about Donald Trump’s post-London attack tweet.
Lots more at the link.
The press has exposed itself to be a gaggle of high school sophomores. No matter what Trump does or says, they should be doing their job- factual reporting. Outside of Fox, there are no reporters any more. They’re ALL commentators and pundits, they’re anti-Trump and they are thin-skinned. Rather than brush it off, they all react emotionally when insulted and their job performances suffer for it. No one is more guilty of this than CNN and Jim Acosta. The irony is that had the press just stuck to its job fairly and honestly it would withstand Trump’s barrage unscathed but after eight years of licking obama’s boots they were going to hate any conservative President, let alone Trump. The fact that he successfully provokes them proves Trump has been right all along. He gave them the opportunity and they proved themselves to be the hateful partisan snowflakes he has long asserted they are. Somehow, in the face of the liberal media adversity, Trump’s approval rating has reached 45%.
Donald Trump is not harming the press. The press is doing that to itself.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.