Even HuffPost is still playing with Trump’s shiny ball.
The New York Times is coming under fire for its front-page coverage of President Donald Trump’s threat on Monday to use the military against American citizens.
The Times front page shared by print editor Tom Jolly showed a headline across all six columns reading ‘As Chaos Spreads, Trump Vows To ‘End It Now.’’ That, critics said, didn’t come close to expressing what happened.
(Yahoo! News, June 2, 2020)
Here, according to HuffPost, is what happened:
Trump used the Bible and St. John’s Church as a backdrop for a message that is ‘antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our church stands for,’ [Bishop Mariann Budde, leader of The Episcopal Diocese of Washington], said in a separate statement.
‘He did not pray when he came to St. John’s,’ Budde said. The president also failed to acknowledge the agony of people of color who are ‘rightfully demanding an end to 400 years of systemic racism and white supremacy.’
(HuffPost, June 2, 2020)
But who cares what “happened”?! Because, if you think Trump using a church or the military for a photo-op is going to offend his base, you’re even more gullible than the fools who voted for him in the first place.
They couldn’t care less that he had US soldiers trample over anti-racism protesters. But it should trouble the rest of us that Lafayette Square (where those protesters were assembled peacefully) now represents a greater shame for American democracy than Tiananmen Square does for Chinese autocracy.
Frankly, white Evangelicals have so lost their way, they’ve been zealously inviting him to use them and their churches as articles of their newfangled faith for years. Indeed, the more contempt he shows for them, the more they seem to worship him. And, lest you forget, he made quite a show of deploying thousands of US soldiers to the border with Mexico merely as a photo-op to give credence to his racist immigration policies.
In any event, as I noted in yesterday’s commentary, Trump has no authority to use the military to squash protests in states all over the country. He’s manufacturing outrage just to deflect media attention from the weak and feckless image of him hiding down in the bunker when protesters began marching on the White House on Friday night.
Remember, this is the same president who threatened to overrule governors to reopen the country. He had no authority to do so. Back then, he was manufacturing outrage just to deflect media attention from the weak and feckless image of him blustering and flailing while 100,000 Americans were dying from Covid-19.
HuffPost is right. The Times was wrong to cast Trump as a leader vowing to restore law and order. It should have cast him as a wannabe dictator pouring gasoline on flames of anarchy spreading all over his country.
But HuffPost is wrong. Because Trump’s law-and-order shtick is not the issue.
Instead, it should be questioning why the Times and others in the mainstream media are not running banner headlines on his incompetent leadership (especially re combating Covid-19). After all, these wag-the-dog, down-the-rabbit-hole, chase-the-shiny-ball stunts are nothing more than his shameless attempts to deflect media attention from his unprecedented failures.
And, no, it does not matter that, like the drugged-out Charlie Sheen when he thought dragon blood made him invincible, Trump will pretend he’s “winning” no matter how much the media duly casts him as a big, fat loser. But that infamous spree in self-delusion didn’t exactly work out well for Charlie …
The Supreme Court: A Silver Lining…?
There’s a silver lining breaking through the dark clouds of protests hovering over America. You probably missed it, but we got a glimpse a few days ago:
The U.S. Supreme Court late Friday rejected a California church’s request to ease restrictions on attendance at worship services, in the court’s first effort to balance religious freedom and public health during the coronavirus pandemic.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four liberals in an unsigned order that denied the church’s application for a stay of the statewide restrictions imposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
(NBC News, May 30, 2020)
If this ray of hope holds, Roberts will join the liberals in serving as a Madisonian check on Trump’s unhinged political ambition (i.e., until voters have their say in November). Of particular interest, of course, will be the Court’s pending rulings in two cases:
- Whether a state can enact a law that places “undue burden” on (poor) women seeking an abortion; and
- Whether Trump can continue to defy state and congressional subpoenas for financial records, which he has spent his entire presidency trying to hide from duly authorized forensic audits.
Stay tuned…
Finally, I feel constrained to reiterate the admonition I gave throughout the summer of 2016 and again in my commentary of May 22 last month, namely that protesting means nothing if you don’t vote on Election Day.
Again, it’s not enough to just vote out Trump. You must vote out Republicans down ballots too! And I’m not just referring to those “proud boys” who support Trump’s racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynistic policies. Because Republicans who stand by as he runs like a bull in a china shop through America’s long-established presidential norms are equally complicit.
Related commentaries:
Trump berates governors… evangelicals…
covid-19 thread… Supreme Court…