Freedom and the press
As our nation celebrates its independence as the world’s greatest-ever venture in democracy, we in the press got the message loud and clear: the present President has a beef with us. Sock, pow, blam, kaboom went Trump’s holiday-weekend tweets, tackling #FraudNewsCNN, “the dishonest media” and, in a videoed WrestleMania tussle dominated by the President, a suited man with the CNN logo in place of his head. Let’s not forget “Crazy Joe” and “Dumb as a rock Mika.”
A small man in a big office aims to attack and tear down news organizations that fall short of adulation as surely as he dispatched rivals (“Little Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted”) in his madhouse presidential campaign.
We overthrew a king for this? To imagine the United States as a nation with a cowed and compliant press, as Trump demands, is to relinquish what makes America America.
Trump’s campaign to quiet the cable-news chatter would be outrageous even if it came from a President whose leadership earned the adulation.
No: He preposterously demands the nation’s journalists behold a Potemkin Village of aims and accomplishments and then herald their greatness — to cheer “Infrastructure Week” last month even as former FBI Director Jim Comey testified about Trump’s efforts to intimidate and then fire him, or celebrate the President’s push to heave 22 million Americans off health insurance.
Here’s the thing: The press has to do its job on full power because, when he does take breaks from attacking perceived enemies, this President cannot for the life of him follow coherent or consistent policy concepts through to fruition.
That leaves it to journalists to sort out facts from fakery, or what POTUS tweeted last week to what’s said from the briefing room podium the next.
Take Trump’s wildly vacillating stands on health care. Candidate Trump promised voters that entitlements — including Medicaid — would be left alone.
As President, Trump held a party in the Rose Garden to celebrate the passage of a House bill that gutted Medicaid.
One month later, the President called the House bill too “mean” and insisted the Senate version be more “generous.”
As the Senate bill languished over disagreements between moderates and conservatives, Trump tweeted Friday: “If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!” (sic)
Then on Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price dismissed the notion the President was serious about that tweet.
Trump zigs and zags with the health of millions at stake, ready to sign whatever policy is put in front of him just so he can tweet “VICTORY!”
The refs at the game are calling foul. Shoving them aside, as White House spokespeople now attempt with blacked-out news briefings, doesn’t win the game. It ends the game.
Happy birthday to a nation much more enduring than this bullying nonsense.