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Trump Derangement Syndrome Tag

The media and political frenzy we've witnessed since the Charlottesville riots and death of Heather Heyer last Saturday has been as intense as anything in recent memory. I've often used as a measure of frenzy the media reaction when Mitt Romney made a statement during the 2012 campaign criticizing the Obama administration's response to Benghazi. By that measure, the current situation is off the charts.

On Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this morning, Jason Johnson depicted the Trump administration as engaging in "the continuing march forward of an attempted authoritarian regime." He accused the administration of seeking "the bit-by-bit destruction of democracy." Johnson is a professor at Morgan State University, a prominent HBCU, and is political editor of The Root, an African-American oriented online publication owned by Univision.

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are suggesting that the Trump White House might be behind the leak of the transcripts of President Trump's conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. On today's Morning Joe, Joe and Mika floated the notion that while the leaks might have been mildly embarrassing to the president, they were "really damaging to the press." In support of their theory on who was behind the leaking, the pair pointed to the fact that when the Washington Post informed the White House that they had the transcripts, Trump administration officials did not ask the paper not to publish them.

Since the election there has been an unprecedented attempt to unwind the election result. Events have accelerated on several fronts lately with attempts from outside and within to paralyze the Trump administration. What started as a collective media freakout on Election Night 2016 quickly progressed to an unprecedented attempt to intimidate Electors into changing their votes. Some Democrats announced, even before Trump took office, plans to impeach him, and Democrat politicians fed media-driven Russia collusion conspiracy theories for which they knew there was no evidence. Chuck Schumer, for example, used the alleged fact of Donald Trump being under FBI investigation as an argument against confirming Neal Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, even though Schumer (but not the public) knew from intelligence briefings that Trump was not personally under investigation.

We all know that CNN's Jim Acosta enjoys playing the role as an activist instead of a journalist, anything to bring attention to himself. He attempted to do just that on Wednesday, but fell flat on his face and made a fool of himself and his employer. President Donald Trump's policy advisor Stephen Miller attended the White House press briefing to explain the RAISE act, an immigration policy, that Trump endorsed Wednesday morning. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) developed the plan and Trump explained that the "application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy." Acosta tried to debate Miller on the English speaking part of the RAISE act and failed miserably.

The opening of CNN's 6 AM hour this morning was one, long lollapalooza of Trump-bashing. Led by co-host Chris Cuomo, panelists David Gregory, Chris Cillizza, and John Avlon took turns whacking the Trump piñata. The topics were diverse: a putative Republican "backlash" against the president; Don, Jr.'s meeting with the Russians; and the murder of Seth Rich. But there was consistency in the relentless criticism of the president.

In yet another example of the anti-Trump contingent creating and spreading misleading stories about President Trump, J. K. Rowling has gone on a Twitter tirade about a video that shows Trump supposedly ignoring a child in a wheelchair. What the now-viral video fails to show is that at the beginning of this event, Trump entered the room and as he moved toward the podium, he stopped specifically to speak to and to shake hands with the little boy in question.

Is Mika Brzezinski predicting that President Trump won't serve out his term? Sounds like it, judging by her observation on today's Morning Joe.

"If you are losing Republicans every step of the way because you've proved to be not trustworthy, and you've failed them miserably on health care . . . [and] undermining someone who's been incredibly loyal to you . . . isn't he playing the person who ends up getting fired on The Apprentice, instead of being the person who says "you're fired?"

I appeared this morning on the Sandy Rios in the Morning on American Family Radio. I've appeared on Sandy's show before, and I appreciate that she gives me plenty of time. The segment is 30 minutes long. We talked about several topics, all surrounding Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and Trump's related frustration with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from anything related to Russia. Trump's continuing Twitter dressing down of Sessions and rumors Sessions and/or Mueller would be fired, were discussed. In the course of the discussion we touched on the following posts of mine:

On CNN this morning, Daily Beast editor-in-chief and CNN analyst John Avlon said that President Trump is "trying to back channel the Saturday Night Massacre." That was a reference to the episode during the Watergate investigation in which President Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, leading to the resignations of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, who refused to carry out Nixon's order.

When Joy Reid and her merry band of liberals sink their teeth into something, it's hard to tear them away. Last month, we entertained you with this item about Reid & Co. mentioning "Russia" 56 times in one hour. On today's AM Joy, the word was "pardon." No Groucho-like duck came down, but Reid and her panelists pored interminably over the pardon possibilities. We counted 32 "pardon" mentions in the 14-minute segment. Naturally, the panel was horrified at the prospect of President Trump pardoning himself or others. Reid herself conjured up a nightmare scenario of Trump committing "treason, and then pardoning himself." The reliably hyperbolic Joan Walsh spoke darkly of a "constitutional crisis."

There has been a lot of attention in the past couple of days to the statistical disconnect between what is of importance to the media versus what is important to the public. Not surprisingly, the media is all Russia, Russia, Russia. The public not so much. Jon Gabriel at Ricochet originated the analysis, though many outlets ran with it, What Americans Care About vs. What the Media Cares About:

Give Joe Scarborough credit. Just when we were getting bored with all the Trump/Nazi analogies, Joe has come up with a new one. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough compared Trump press secretary Sean Spicer to an old Soviet spokesman and propagandist. Scarborough's beef was that Spicer had supposedly said that the meeting of Trump campaign people including Donald, Jr. and the Russians was "just about adoptions." Joe called that a "lie." But have a look at the screenshot below, showing what Spicer actually said.