As the press continues its feeding frenzy, churning out TRUMP!-based tabloid journalism as fast as they can print it, they consistently get their facts wrong and expose their biases… ultimately aiding conservatives who make claims of partisan media and “Fake News.”
(And that’s not just a shame or a travesty — it constitutes a real danger to press freedom and credibility. Such reckless journalism does not damage Trump, but helps him politically, while weakening one of the few remaining pillars of American democracy.)
The recent zeal to generate sensational headlines — Trump to shatter NATO alliance! — forced foreign leaders, like French President Macron, to defend Trump and correct the record:
MACRON AND HIS EUROPEAN COHORTS TELL US THERE WAS NO U.S. ULTIMATUM TO WITHDRAW FROM NATO.
(Cool your jets, Reuters.)
Yes, on his European diplomacy tour Donald Trump was frequently late, disorganized, unrehearsed, self-indulgent, and capricious. He said what he wanted to, rather than what he was told to say. He acted impetuously and imperiously.
What else is new?
Such conduct hardly distinguishes Trump from the average U.S. president.
Bill Clinton was famously late for everything. GWB treated foreign leaders with bumptious informality and was also, like DJT, sexist toward German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And dotty old Reagan could never stick to a script, either.
Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, and his United Nations Ambassador, John Bolton — and Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland — lobbed egregious insults at America’s traditional European allies.
None of which received much American press coverage.
Because such behavior coming out of Washington, DC, is perfectly normal.
With the notable exception of President Barack Obama, one of the most gracious, intelligent, and dignified presidents in our history, modern U.S. presidents have comported themselves with unrestrained pomposity and imperiousness, across the globe.
And all U.S. presidents of recent decades, especially Republicans, have dunned the hell out of Washington’s NATO allies with demands that they increase their military expenditures.
For the most part, our past presidents have done precisely as Trump did, swaggering and finger-pointing at Europe, with thinly veiled threats and embarrassing amounts of braggadocio.
Because aggressive posturing and bullying are Washington’s bread and butter.
SO WHY ALL THE HYPERVENTILATING ABOUT TRUMP’S RECENT TRIP TO EUROPE?
WHY ALL THE MEDIA HOSTILITY TO DONALD TRUMP, IN GENERAL?
After all:
– Trump isn’t the one who passed the 1996 Telecom Act, allowing a handful of Rupert Murdochs to gobble up virtually every news/media outlet in the nation and decimate independent, diverse journalism in America. The president who signed into law that free press-obliterating, minority-silencing abomination was celebrated by our media establishment — because he had advanced the neo-fascist agenda… dramatically.
– Trump didn’t use the U.S. military to target and murder “unembedded” journalists, as George W. Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan. BUSH KILLED THOSE JOURNALISTS to send a lethal message of intimidation to foreign reporters as he launched Operation Enduring Freedom and subsequently, Operation Iraqi Freedom. While the rest of the world witnessed those war crimes and gasped, the U.S. media was kind enough to sweep those incidents under the rug, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Most Americans, unless they followed FAIR’s coverage or saw the award-winning documentary, “Control Room,” had no idea that the Pentagon was targeting and killing journalists.)
BECAUSE OUR MEDIA COVERS FOR U.S. PRESIDENTS WHO MURDER JOURNALISTS — IT DOESN’T CONDEMN THEM! (That really would be the world turned upside down!)
Vladimir Putin, our jingoist press insists, is the only world leader who “murders journalists” — not George W. Bush, despite all the evidence. Not Saakashvili, Washington’s former client in Georgia. Not our allies in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, or Israel…
– Trump didn’t use the Espionage Act to prosecute more news sources than all of his predecessors combined, hunting world-renowned journalists and whistleblowers like traitorous dogs… something only a right-wing, proto-fascist madman would do… or Barack Obama, actually.
President Obama didn’t limit himself to Tweeting mean things about reporters he didn’t like. Instead he prosecuted journalists or cut off their access. He even booted the venerable and highly respected Helen Thomas, the “Dean of the Washington, DC, Press Pool,” out of his press conferences. Just as he excluded whole organizations, like FoxNews (neither venerable nor trusted — definitely partisan).
And Obama refused to investigate and prosecute his election-rigging lunatic predecessor for torture, illegal domestic surveillance and “white” propaganda, the politicization of the Justice Department, illegal military aggression and genocide, rendition, and targeting journalists with military weaponry.
So, let’s be honest:
THE REASON OUR NEO-FASCIST MEDIA IS SO UNREMITTINGLY HOSTILE TO DONALD TRUMP IS BECAUSE TRUMP — THE UNDISCIPLINED, INCOMPETENT EGOMANIAC — IS A HINDRANCE TO THE AGENDA OF MODERN AMERICAN FASCISTS.
(Whereas Obama was their savior and redeemer, which is why the media gave him a near-total pass.)
TRUMP’S REAL TRANSGRESSIONS:
– Railing against NAFTA, Trump refused to sign the G7 statement (“Bad, Donald!”) and insulted neoliberal darling and oil pipeline champion, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (a posturing fraud who mostly does the bidding of right-wing oligarchs).
– Worse yet, Trump made no attempt to revive the world-enslaving Trans-Pacific Partnership (“Bad Donald!”) intended to break China and keep the West on top through modernized slave labor and the nullification of environmental regulations.
– In the company of our European allies, Trump didn’t want to discuss adding Georgia and Ukraine to NATO (“Bad Donald!”), which would heighten the risk of a needless, potentially catastrophic military confrontation with Russia. (The U.S. had brought kleptocrat dictators, coups, neo-Nazi shock troops, and worse to those nations, hoping to use them to further cage the “Russian Bear” — only those coups were largely thwarted by the people of those nations, resentful of foreign aggression and interference.)
– And Trump didn’t end up discussing prolonging NATO’s military presence in Afghanistan (“Bad Donald!”). That is extremely vexing to the warmongering neo-fascists who run America’s editorial rooms. In collusion with the military industrial complex with which they are financially entangled, the corporatized “free press” wants America’s most interminable war to go on even longer.
HERE IS A MYSTERY SOLVED: THE MEDIA ATTACKS TRUMP NOT BECAUSE HE’S HOSTILE TO OUR ALLIES AND A THREAT TO THE FREE PRESS… but because he’s so very BAD at it.
With Trump in the White House, the neo-fascists don’t have a front man who can keep their omnicidal, Christian Dominionist project rolling along smoothly.
And that’s why the establishment positively H-A-T-E-S Donald J. Trump.
But this analysis is only comprehensible to those who have a sense of our nation’s recent history.
Those who have paid close attention and resisted the gradual takeover of America by modern fascists.
Recognizing the true nature of our neo-fascist establishment doesn’t mean we think that Trump is “The Good Guy.”
It simply means that history’s worst malefactors, those responsible for reviving fascism and killing the planet’s ecosystem, positively DETEST Trump… because he’s unequivocally bad for their agenda.
(Almost as “bad” as they perceive Bernie would have been… though Sen. Sanders has been genuflecting before the altar of RussiaGate, of late. Shame on him.)
Donald Trump, despite his natural inclinations, his temperament, and blatant racism… is in point of fact a very BAD neo-fascist.
Like most everything else he’s ever attempted, outside of reality TV, Trump sucks at this.