DAZ: Trump's no chump
SAY what you like but Donald Trump, deserving it or otherwise, has received the roughest media treatment of any democraticallyelected leader I’ve ever seen.
I know a lot of people dislike him. A real lot. And I can see why. He’s very conservative and very controversial.
He’s aggressive, he’s right in your face and he can be loose with facts and figures and reality. Many women have serious issues with him. I get it.
But he’s shaking up all kinds of institutions, shaking out featherbedding and empire building that have gone on unchallenged for decades. He’s sacked government agencies and left a multitude of positions unfilled. He doesn’t like red tape, he wants change — change he was elected to make.
Most of all, Donald Trump doesn’t like opposition. And as he sees it, his chief opposition is the media. And he’d be right. Dead right. Many in the media hate him. Absolutely hate his guts.
Last week, he held up his Fake News Awards ridiculing the media for more than dozen clear errors where it had been wrong.
Now this doesn’t mean every media complaint by Trump is correct. No way. But if a free media is really meant to be the cornerstone of democracy it likes to claim, then it has to toughen up and take a few lumps.
And it needs to check itself and its performance. And its objectivity and motives. Because right now, Donald Trump, for all the bile and invective and hatred so widely heaped on him, is doing a lot better than a great many in the media would have you believe.
For all his supposed warmongering nuke belligerence, the two Koreas are talking about marching together at the Winter Olympics.
ISIS, widely seen as the product of conditions created by Obama, has been defeated on his watch.
For all his supposed kickbacks to business mates, his tax cuts are revitalising the economy, driving pay increases and boosting confidence.
The stock market is soaring, unemployment is down. Maybe it’s not all due to him but maybe much if it is.
For all his dodgy staff appointments, he’s sacked an enormous number of them.
Despite what author Michael Wolff might report as a dysfunctional government, Trump’s office is far more disciplined than it was a year ago.
And for all the talk of impeachment, nothing has happened. For all the supposed Russian collusion, nothing has happened.
For all the efforts to paint him blacker than blacker on racism, sexism, jingoism, protectionism, unprofessionalism, nepotism and egotism, he’s still in the Oval Office and looking stronger than ever.
Why? Because more times than not, Trump is playing the chaos card.
And he loves it. Creating chaos keeps everyone off balance. Keeps all the players trying to steer him to their agenda busy chasing spot fires instead.
Controversy, infighting, scandal, leaks, outrageous claims, obvious untruths and straight-up manufactured fictions are Trump’s tools of the trade.
And keeping everyone trying to second-guess him, picking his next move, arguing over his last move, or anxious and on tenterhooks is just grist to the mill. Never give a sucker an even break, as the great American adage says.
It leaves him free to pursue what he really wants. And play golf too.
Is that so surprising, though? Trump didn’t make his billions, even if he lost a few along the way, by being an idiot. And he didn’t beat uber-professional politician Hillary Clinton at her own game by being an idiot either.
Trump’s beaten the media at its own game. Hold on, let’s restate that — he’s thrashed the media at its own game. Rather than submit to some of the media’s shortcomings in objectivity, its vindictive opposition and clear political motives, he’s pursued his own.
Thing is, Trump’s here to stay, midterm elections and congress blockages notwithstanding, and if the fortunes of the US continue to rise — and the global villains decline — you can expect him to win a second term.
If areas of the media want to claim some higher moral ground or effectively drive a different agenda other than Trump’s, they need to boost their substance and objectivity. Chasing shadows and political correctness won’t cut it and, quite obviously, won’t get traction.
Hillary Clinton refused to address the electorates that she needed to win and that needed her. She lost because she deserved to lose. Many of Trump’s media critics are doing exactly the same — ignoring the public, their audience, at their peril.
Trump’s opponents might see his win as a massive protest vote but they’d be wrong. It’s the democracy, stupid.
There’s more to Trump and his simple, effective use of democracy than they’ll ever see. Because they don’t want to. And because they can’t see how they’re such dumb pawns on his chessboard.
Trump might not be the genius he thinks he is but he’s got their measure, that’s for sure. He won’t play their game.
It’s all kind of like Alexander the Great when he was confronted with untying the impossibly complicated Gordian knot. Rather than submit to the political game, he drew his sword and cut straight through it.
Simple. Any dummy, let alone a stable genius, could have done it