If the media are ‘enemies,’ why must they be Trump’s chumps?
Questions to ask after one month of President Donald Trump:
Is Stephen Colbert our new Edward R. Murrow?
Is Stephen Miller a human or a hologram?
The same for Kellyanne Conway: real or Memorex?
If the media are, as Donald Trump says, enemies “of the American people,” why are members of the press genuflecting at his knee? Why are they indulging him at all?
What would Ed Murrow say about Donald Trump? I promise you it would be curt. In 1953, the CBS icon initiated Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s fiery fall from eminence by assailing his “hysterical disregard for decency and human dignity.”
Sixty-four years later — and on the same network — Stephen Colbert is taking on a president and his mouthpieces who show hysterical disregard for truth.
Take Stephen Miller, the aide Trump sent out to the Sunday news shows for one of the most bizarre televised performances in U.S. history.
I say “sent out.” We cannot be sure whether Miller has actual legs or was rolled out — or if he exists as a URL built by computer scientists who have come up with what a lie looks like in human form.
Miller said that without a doubt thousands of voters from Massachusetts were bused into New Hampshire to vote illegally for Hillary Clinton. Uh, yeah.
He said he would go to “any show, anytime, anywhere” to say that.
Colbert invited him: “And, listen, if you don’t show up, I’m going to call you a liar. And if you do show up, I’m going to call you a liar to your face.”
Well, surprise; no-show Miller is a liar. The only real question is if he’s a man or a humanoid projection.
Trump? He tweeted huzzahs for Miller’s stone-faced fraud.
At any other time in our nation’s history, such behavior instantly and irrevocably would have disqualified someone from public office. Not, apparently, now. By the time the Trump presidency is done, lies will have become such a seasoning as to join salt and pepper on every dinner table.
At his news conference last Thursday, Trump said he’d won more electoral votes – 306 — than any president since President Ronald Reagan.
Informed by a reporter of President Barack Obama’s 365 votes in 2008 — also not mentioned: Obama’s 332 in 2012 — Trump said he meant “Republican presidents.” Informed by the same enemy, er, reporter, that George H.W. Bush won with 426, Trump said, um, he was working with numbers someone else gave him.
Ah, those fact-fixated enemies: When CNN, which Trump deems the devil, reported these matters online, it didn’t say he lied. It said he had “again overstated.”
To hear Trump explain the dumping of national security adviser Michael Flynn, it was not because of what Flynn did — engaging in diplomacy on Trump’s behalf before the latter took office — but because we found out about it.
Oh, wait; according to too many press accounts, Flynn was dumped because he misled Vice President Mike Pence.
Except: Trump was told by intelligence 17 days before Flynn’s ouster about these things. So if Pence was in the dark, it wasn’t Flynn who put him there. Trump did.
The scandal is not about an affront to Pence’s sensibilities. It’s not about aides interacting with Russia. It’s about whether Trump authorized it. Report this. Probe this.
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” says it no longer will indulge Trump mis-spokeswoman Conway, whose sole contribution to planetary life stands to be the term “alternative facts.”
Such media resistance needs to happen more often. A boycott of Trump’s news conferences is in order, as would be a walkout the next time the prevaricator-in-chief reduces fact to factory fumes.
A lie is a lie — a distinction that shouldn’t be left up to latenight comedians. Dear Sen. Ted Cruz, Thank you for your recitation of a portion of the Declaration of Independence and for the thrillingly excruciating post-election, post-Obamacare eulogy on CNN the other night.
What I’m scratching my head about is why? Why is it necessary to debate Sen. Bernie Sanders at this point if the GOP controls the White House and Congress? I’m perplexed.
Why spend hours preparing, debating and then recovering from the fruitless effort to untie Sanders’ socialistic Gordian-knot mind? It can’t be done. Sanders would support a 100-percent income tax to fund his version of Vermontistan from sea to shining sea if possible.
And not that you asked me, but I’d spend that time coming up with the adult version of a health care replacement and leave Sanders alone, so he can
History shows that all dictatorships have had at least one common tactic: persuading their people that the nation is under threat from enemies abroad. It was true with Communist Russia and Albania and in today’s North Korea. Who can forget the Berlin Wall? Albanians built thousands of bunkers.
North Korean walls and billboards are covered with paintings of attacking U.S. airplanes sent over North Korea by the “Great Satan.”
The recipe for a dictatorial government’s terrorism? Instill irrational fears, muzzle the free press, imprison or kill all critics, intimidate the judges and promise heavenly things to all true believers.