How does Trump outrage me? Too many ways to count.
As today’s title suggests, however, I am always more outraged by people who support and enable Trump than by the dotard himself. Unfortunately, this has made me something of a Debbie Downer among family and friends. Because I’m often reminding those laughing at Trump that the joke’s on us. After all, the American people elected him president of the United States (and “leader of the free world”).
That said, no enablers outrage me more than the mainstream media for continually shining klieg lights on his distracting tweets. This, while
Democracy Dies in Darkness.
That, of course, is the enlightening motto of The Washington Post. Yet even it blithely propagates the forces of darkness Trump willfully incites with his tweets. The irony seems lost on the Post that, in this context, occasional reports to “hold Trump accountable” register as little more than dying embers.
Trump threw all of this into stark relief on Thursday with a plainly meaningless tweet about delaying the November election. And, like Pavlovian dogs, his klieg-light operators in the mainstream media lit it up on cue.
But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell betrayed just how meaningless it was. Specifically, he led otherwise cowered Republicans in rolling their eyes for TV cameras over Trump’s tweet.
Except that I can barely contain my contempt for über enablers among Republicans like Steven Calabresi, cofounder of the conservative Federalist Society. They are the SOBs who spent the past four years helping Trump pack the Judiciary with right-wing nutjobs.
Perhaps you’ve seen their nominees displaying about as much legal reasoning during their Republican controlled-confirmation hearings as Trump’s hydroxy witch doctor, Madam Stella Immanuel, MD, does during her stream-of-consciousness press conferences.
Then again, who can blame their nominees when Calabresi himself is spouting voodoo reasoning like: Trump is not a fascist; he just tweets fascistic sh!t. Yet that reasoning now has these federalist guardians of American democracy demanding Democrats impeach him over a meaningless tweet. This, after they opposed the Democrats’ attempt just months ago to impeach Trump for shattering every presidential norm and breaking enough criminal laws to make Richard Nixon wince.
Thanks for the garden hose, but the house has already burned to the ground. Friggin’ hypocrites!
By contrast, the Republican “Never-Trumpers” behind The Lincoln Project have been guarding American democracy from day one of the Trump presidency. Therefore, I hope they force Johnnies-come-lately like Calabresi (a.k.a. rats now jumping ship) to tread water for a very long time. This, before throwing them the political life raft they are clearly angling for.
In any case, it’s simply unthinkable that this Democratic-controlled Congress would delay the election, which it has sole authority to do. But why would it do so for Covid-19 after previous Congresses did not for the Civil War, the Spanish Flu, World War I, or World War II?
More to the point, though, no news editor worth their salt should have given such a tweet the time of day. For it was as irresponsible for any news organization to report on it as it was reckless for any president to post it.
Yet every news organization did. Even worse, they shined so much light on Trump’s meaningless tweet that, by noon on Thursday, continuing coverage had already relegated the most meaningful news of the day … to die in darkness:
- The US Bureau of Economic Analysis reported at 8:30 am that US gross domestic product dropped a record 32.9 percent. That is far worse than the previous historic quarterly drop, which was 10 percent in 1958.
Not to mention the indignity of TV anchors cutting short reflections on the state funeral for civil rights icon John Lewis to air fleeting outrage over Trump’s latest shiny ball.
Perhaps that’s why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became so indignant when a CNN anchor still tried to get her to … play ball 24 hours later. I happened to be watching yesterday afternoon when she upbraided anchor Brianna Keilar for doing so.
Here, courtesy of the Speaker’s homepage is how their exchange, in relevant part, played out:
________
Brianna Keilar. I wanted to ask you about something he said about the eulogy, but let’s go back to what the President is saying. … You know that he tweeted yesterday the suggestion that it could be delayed. … So, what is your concern about what his motive is there?
Speaker Pelosi. I don’t intend to come on one of these shows and talk about the, shall we say, wanderings and the notion mongering of the President of the United States. He succeeds because all we do is talk about it. So, why are we even talking about this? …
[W]e spend far too much time asking people what they think about some notion mongering, some stuff that has no prospect of success and isn’t even have – had any relationship to fact, truth, data, evidence that this notion monger is putting forth.
________
Drop the mic!
Unfortunately, long before Trump, news programs became more interested in sensationalism than in journalism. That, in part, is what provoked me to write such commentaries as
- “Journalism is Having a Very, Very Pathetic Moment,” November 13, 2013;
- “CNN Boss Is What’s Wrong with Journalism Today,” May 10, 2014; and
- “Humping Trump Exposes News Anchormen as Worse than Used Car Salesmen,” May 2, 2016.
Here is how I vented my abiding lament in the last of those cited:
These days, news anchormen serve as little more than hosts of reality TV shows masquerading as news programs. Their programming mantra – ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ – used to reflect reporting on an increasingly violent society. Now it reflects reporting on anything that outrages, scares, or titillates – just to generate ratings. …
Which brings me to the news media’s mercenary coverage of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Remarkably, they report every single thing he says as ‘Breaking News’, especially the Tourrete-like insults he hurls. …
The news media have become so focused on chasing profits that chasing news has become a distraction.
This is why I harbor no illusion that Pelosi’s admonition will chasten Keilar. However, if more politicians and pundits call out more anchors in this fashion, they could cause a media transformation of consciousness.
That would spare us spectacles like this:
- On the one hand, news anchors are bemoaning how Trump’s tweets about ballot rigging are fatally undermining the American people’s confidence in democratic elections. On the other hand, they are spending most of their time on air feeding the American people sensational reports on Trump’s tweets about ballot rigging.
You’d think it might occur to them that Trump’s tweets would have far less effect if they simply stopped covering them. But that will never happen. Because his tweets are sensational; sensationalism sells; and that’s their bottom line.
In a similar vein, Trump knows that, with the enabling media, posting an outrageous tweet is like handing a dog a bone. And, like a good dog, they never disappoint him. In this sense, the media and Trump not only need but feed each other. How’s that for a perverse symbiosis.
Mind you, outrageous tweets are not even the most tantalizing bones Trump has to throw at them. White House briefings, military stunts, executive orders, and TV interviews all present opportunities for more sensational election distraction.
And I fear the media are just salivating at the prospect of him taking full advantage of every opportunity between now and Election Day; that is, assuming he does not resign before then.
To Fellow Commentators
It is dismayingly obvious that far too many of you limit your viewing to the cable-news stations that reflect and reinforce your political views. As a result, your siloed punditry and commentary add no more to public debate than the talking points liberal and conservative spinmeisters propagate.
But I urge you to follow the “Attack-by-Stratagem” lesson Sun Tzu’s gives in Chapter 3, Stratagem 18 of his Art of War, namely to “know the enemy.” This is why, in addition to watching CNN, MSNBC, and Democracy Now, I also watch FOX, OAN, and RT.
Mind you, anyone with a fully functioning brain can only watch the latter (conservative stations) in small doses. And so I do, in very small doses indeed. But that suffices to make my commentaries more “fair and balanced.”
Related commentaries:
Journalism… John Lewis… humping Trump…
resign… Trump tell-alls… November election…