“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.
Starting with the Old Grey Hag the New York Pravda and all the way down the liberal leftists news media is commiting suicide and like Lemmings are running right off the cliff to i their own demise
No, the popular dictator tactic is to have the media in lapdog mode, as Obama did. The dictator tactic is to have the media cover up your mistakes and scandals and misrepresent your record… as Obama did.
Widely parroted here by the usual, willfully ignorant suspects on these pages.
Remember the “Journal-list”, the organization of so-called “journalists” who worked together to coordinate stories and create an echo-chamber for their lies? Just because it was exposed does not mean it was disbanded.
Trust in the media is down and support for Trump is up. This is no fluke. As shown in the article, the public’s trust in the media, as they tried to peddle blatant lies to the American public when the truth is plainly visible, began long before Trump. It was an open secret, going without saying. However, Trump, when it focused on him like an armor piercing shaped charge, called it out, called it what it is, and the public cheered the open revelation. Finally, someone is standing up to the demagoguery of the corrupt liberal media. Finally, someone speaks the public’s mind without worrying about what the media might think of it and how they might liberal-speak translate it to the citizens.
The more the media loses in its skirmishes with Trump, the more frustrated and desperate they become. The more frustrated and desperate they are, the more transparent and thin their lies become. The more transparent and thin their lies become, the more their trust erodes. Rinse and repeat.
Even when they get caught in a sting, being fed a lie to help pinpoint the sources of illegal leaks within the government, they don’t proceed cautiously and rationally. Whatever juicy Trump-killing tidbit they are fed, they leap on it like a duck on a June bug and SPRINT with it. For, for liberals, being caught lying or spreading false rumors is no shame; it’s all part of the job of trying to bring down the United States.
Even though the media is loathe to report it, the majority of Americans are realizing that Trump is making progress in reversing the damage left by Obama. Though the media tries to suppress it, the majority of Americans are realizing that the Mueller “investigation” is a biased, partisan attempt at a governmental coup. The main problem with restoring the trust in the media is that liberals, who comprise the vast majority of the media, never seem to learn from mistakes because they are never held accountable for the results. If and when this changes, the media might change and become what they are intended to be; an organization that INFORMS (not lies to) the American public.
The funny part is, this goes back so far and only in this last election cycle does it seem that someone (in this case Trump and company have actually not only called the ultra biased press out but in fact has decided to go to war with them. And it’s about time!
I always think back to the day Newt was elected Speaker of the House. He made what in my estimation was a great acceptance speech while laying out his objectives. Once this was over the talking heads took over.
I distinctly remember all 3 networks not only changing what he said to fit their narrative but in fact talking down to to us, telling us “This is what he really said” and not to accept or believe anything else.
As such, this isn’t new. I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard from me, but if any remember, I said some time ago a co-opted press is only good for the powers that be until they feel that same co-opted press has lost its effectiveness. They will then turn on their propaganda pals in a heartbeat.
The public is seeing through it now to some degree. it’s going to be quite a ride until somehow we can once agin turn out honest journalists.
I liked the analogy of the teen girls and a chosen target, they whisper and conspire, sad thing is they are not the “in” crowd. Petty little 1/2 wits.
I can still log in.Amazing as I haven’t tried in a few years. I’ll have to visit more often in the future. Been on Google Plus too much. I don’t watch the Lame Stream Media most of the time unless something really important is going on. However I did watch the 2016 election on television when all was said and done.
“Semper Fi”
I left CA during Obama’s 2nd term because the homeless situation had gotten so out of control there that major diseases were making a comeback.
Thousands of homeless congregated under the freeway overpasses and riverbanks.
BUT…..no coverage!
Now that Donald Trump is president I have seen one story about homelessness after another!
But, if you look at these camps, they look smaller than the ones Obama had.
In San Fran the so-called Trump homeless are more the result of high housing costs than people being out of work!
A tent in a backyard can go for $400/month there!
The press is just not being fair.
OMG OG OMG The main stream media has completely not reported this impending doom!
Immediate evacuations are required!
James Hansen NASA Scientist said Lower Manhattan will be underwater and the Arctic will be ice-free by 2018. THATS IN 3 DAYS!!!!
He is real smart and educated too, American adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of global warming
You start with a false assumption. The “press” has NEVER been fair. It’s just now we have the internet and we can find direct sources. Today’s press is so blatantly biased but now they don’t control the only outlets of information.