President Donald Trump continued his feud with the “fake news” media on Thursday, as he hosted many of the “bloggers” and “tweeters” and YouTube celebrities and talk radio talkers who are more inclined to praise him, and even the usually friendly Fox News called his “tweets” on the matter a “bizarre tirade.”
“Bizarre” seems an apt if slightly understated adjectives to describe Trump’s remarks to the nutcase conspiracy theorists and far-right race-baiters and unapologetic Trump apologists the president had assembled at the White House. Among the crowd were the editor of the conspiracy-theorizing Gateway Pundit web site, a fascist organization-affiliated defenestrated White House official and current talk radio show host, a guerrilla videographer whose “Project Veritas” has been caught several times editing its footage in dishonest ways, another talk radio talker who has recently accused Democratic presidential candidate and California Sen. Kamala of not being an “American black” because her naturalized citizen father is from Jamaica and her naturalized citizen mother is from India. Even Trump seemed to acknowledge it was a motley crew.
“Some of you are extraordinary. Can’t say everybody. The crap you come up with is unbelievable,” Trump said. Later he added that “Some of you guys are out there. I mean it’s genius, but it’s bad.”
Even so, Trump clearly preferred the crap some of his apologists come up with to the more critical coverage he gets from The New York Times and The Washington Post and the Cable New Network and the National Broadcasting Company and the rest of what used to be called mainstream media. He also asserted that the new social media had usurped the ancien regime in importance and influence, and boasted that his “tweets” alone have bested all the outdated print and broadcast and even cable news sources. He acknowledged that his “tweets” were often pockmarked with misspellings, but he explained that by saying “Really I’m actually a good speller, but everyone said the fingers aren’t as good as the brain.”
Trump didn’t acknowledge that his “tweets” also routinely have enough punctuation errors and random capitalizations and other offenses against the English language that any competent fourth-grade teacher would red-mark it to death, nor did he admit that many of them are downright untruthful, and he even bragged that his as-yet unverified claims that President Barack Obama put a “tapp” on his phones had “taken off like a rocket.” He even related a longtime boast in a “tweet” that all the big newspapers would wind up endorsing him and all the over-the-air and cable networks will lavish him with favorable coverage for fear they’d go out out of business without him. Trump truly seems to believe that the public will lose all interest in the news if his hit reality show is cancelled.
“That’s why they’ll all be Endorsing me at some point, one way or another,” Trump “tweeted.” “Could you imagine having Sleepy Joe Biden, or Alfred E. Newman …” We couldn’t find the rest of the “tweet,” but we assume he meant former Delaware Senator and Vice President and front-running Democratic presidential candidate Biden, and that the Alfred E. Newman was a reference to South Bend, Indiana, mayor and second-tier presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who bears what Trump thinks is slight a resemblance to the mascot of the recently deceased Mad Magazine. Biden is currently leading Trump in head-to-head polls against Trump, and in the unlikely event that Buttigieg winds up as president he’d be the first openly homosexual person to occupy the White House, and in any case we can’t imagine the public will lose its longstanding preoccupation with the news if Trump’s reality show is cancelled.
Having grown up on Mad Magazine, we also note with great annoyance that Trump misspelled the hallowed name of Alfred E. Neuman.
Those ancien regime media are frequently wrong, to be sure, but they usually acknowledge their mistakes with embarrassing corrections and the occasional retractions, which Trump and his apologists never do, and for the most part they’re far more pristine in their use of the English language. Their batting average for the truth is better than Trump’s, too, even when you take into account their undeniable left-of-center bias, Trump has an undeniable ratings appeal, and lately the late night night television comics have feasted on his videotaped comments about the Moon being an important part of of Mars and the Continental Army seizing the airports during the Revolutionary War and the kidney being an important part of the heart. Even so, we’re sure people will stay tuned in for any dumb thing some damned Democrat might say if her or she is elected.
Trump parenthetically “tweeted” that he was “(just joking)” about winning a third or fourth term, but our guess is that for all its faults a free press and broadcast and cable media will outlast Trump, for better or worse. We also hold out hope that the truth, whatever it might be, will ultimately prevail.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 