Trump tweets: The media is the 'enemy of the American people'
Shocking! He doesn't even know that media is a plural noun.
It would be correct to say that the media ARE the enemy of the American people.
All kidding aside, the American media do get a lot wrong and do a lot unprofessionally.
Trump is playing the newsfolk like a fiddle. First off, they've taken their collective eye off the ball and have now declared what the President thinks of THEM to be the biggest story of the past couple of days when there are so much bigger fish to be fried. Secondly, many have been suckered into responding to his nonsense by unabashedly expressing their true opinions of him (as opposed to simply debunking his bullshit), which only provides evidence for his claim that they're biased against him & were never going to give him a fair shake.
ReplyDeleteHe threw out the bait, and they took it all in one gulp. Trump may be bat-shit crazy, but he's Barnum-level when it comes to working the marks.
If the media "do a lot wrong and do a lot unprofessionally", is that a justification for calling them "the enemy of the American people"?
ReplyDeleteBy that criteria, what does that make Trump?
No, not such a justification at all, but in all fairness, Trump is articulating the thoughts of many people who have stories written or broadcast about them which bore no resemblance to reality. I've been interviewed many times for many reasons, and I would only credit one of the reporters for writing an accurate story. Most of the time they ignored everything I said, while cherry-picking facts and quotes to support the opinion they had before they talked to me and ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
DeleteThere's one thing you have to remember: most reporters are not exceptionally bright. You know those guys in school whose homework you copied? The ones who were obviously destined for success? They did not become reporters.
But they are not our enemy. They are just shitty friends. As a general rule, when reporters get a story wrong it is not malicious, but a combination of bias and incompetence. (Rathergate being an obvious example. He wasn't malicious, simply incompetent and predisposed to think the story was true.)
Now that I've written all that, the fact still remains that Trump's press conference revealed a man as unhinged and self-pitying after a few weeks in office as Nixon in his final days. That's pretty scary.