Is the media the enemy?
Rich Lowry, writing at Politico, notes that the media has come to occupy in Republican politics a unifying opponent once held by the Soviet Union.
His column originally was titled The Media Is Trump’s Soviet Union (and subsequently retitled The Media Is Trump’s Evil Empire):
The entire first hour of today’s Morning Joe was one, long, hyperventilation over President Trump’s press conference of yesterday.
From Joe Scarborough to Willie Geist, Nicolle Wallace to Jon Meacham, Mike Barnicle to Michael Steele, the crew outdid themselves with apocalyptic condemnations of the president.
Below, we’ve noted some of the lowlights, but...
During a press conference Tuesday President Trump once again commented on the violence in Charlottesville. Naturally, his remarks were instantly mischaracterized to portray Trump as condoning the very neo-Nazis and white supremacists he condemned in a brief speech Monday.
In no time, the political media set began virtue signalling based on inaccurate...
White House Communications Director Mike Dubke’s resignation was made public Tuesday. Dubke resigned May 18, but agreed to work through the President’s first trip abroad. He’s said to be leaving on good terms.
From Fox News:
Veteran GOP strategist Mike Dubke resigned as White House communications director on...
On today’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski said of President Trump: “I know it is a terrible thing to question someone’s patriotism. But you wonder what he cares about. You really do. I do.”
On today’s Morning Joe, Scarborough said that President Trump “revealed himself as the jackass that leaked top secret Israeli intel,” adding that the intel that President Trump allegedly leaked was “about somebody on the inside of a terror organization that killed 20 little girls and their mothers last night.”
Scarborough first observed that...
Lately it seems as though there’s a story a day reporting some new Trump administration scandal based on a leak from an anonymous government “official.” We are asked to take the facts in those stories on trust, without a chance to evaluate the veracity or motives of the source of the...
The most egregious part of the Trump administration is the media’s coverage of the Trump administration.
Dating back to campaign season Trump, political media disproportionately focused on Trump’s every coming, going, meal, and insignificant oddity. Not much has changed post-election.
The “nerd prom” is a hideous display in which journalists mingle with celebrities to pat each other on the backs. Trump, who is constantly feuding with the celebrity journalists, declined to appear, as Professor Jacobson wrote in late February, Trump bows out of White House Correspondents Association “Nerd Prom”:
The White House Correspondents Association...
I don’t go to conferences very often. It’s a blog conference phobia:
As longtime readers know, I don’t do blog conferences. There are a variety of reasons for that, but mostly it’s me, not them.
Since I wrote that in June 2012, I have attended a couple of conferences, mostly because I...
One of the things that I most enjoy about President Trump is his canny trolling of the media; he holds up hoops, they jump. He whispers, “look! Squirrel!,” they scurry off chasing squirrels. It’s highly entertaining.
In perhaps the best example of his expert trolling yet, the president has announced that he...
Trump promised to deviate from the Beltway status quo. Forget taking a salary or spending all of his time in Washington, Trump announced months ago he’d do neither.
In his first interview with 60 Minutes, Trump said:
“Well,...
Donald Trump’s accusation that the Obama administration “wiretapped” his phones and/or Trump Tower, continues to reverberate.
The accusations have refocused the argument over Trump’s alleged Russia ties, which amount at this point only to innuendo, into a discussion of Obama surveillance practices.
As discussed in my prior post, which is getting a lot...
The White House has drawn a significant amount of criticism for poor communication. In an interview with Fox and Friends, Trump took responsibility for the communication problems.
Trump, in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” specifically cited his immigration policy, and said that perhaps the roll...
The White House Correspondents Association annual dinner is referred to by the members as “Nerd Prom.”
Is there possibly a more annoying title in the world? They are not nerds. But they do think of themselves as being smarter than their readers and viewers.
It’s a disgusting spectacle of insiders patting insiders...
