If Trump Cures Cancer, The Media Will Complain About Overpopulation [Opinion]
If sanctions are to be imposed on Russia for interfering in the U.S. presidential election, shouldn’t the mainstream media also face penalties considering its unrelenting negative coverage of presidential candidate and winner Donald Trump?
As the headline above metaphorically suggests, it is readily apparent that nothing the President-elect says or does will be acceptable in most hostile media precincts, which is functioning as an opposition party rather than news gatherers and disseminators. Law professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit often refers to the American press as Democrat operatives with bylines.
No one knows if President-elect Donald Trump will “Make American Great Again” through his ambitious America-first agenda given opposition from what has come to be called the “uni-party,” i.e., the status quo, globalist Democrats and Republicans, as well as so-called deep state federal bureaucrats, who may have been responsible for leaking the Russian dossier hoax/fake news to BuzzFeed.
A Washington Post columnist described Trump, a former Democrat and independent who ran for president as a Republican, as the nation’s first independent president and who “staged a hostile takeover of an existing major party.”
With some big employers already announcing job expansion in America even before Trump takes the oath on Friday, however, the Trump pre-administration appears to be off to a good start.
When discussing all-time stock market highs during the Trump transition, which presumably is good news for everyone, though, one journalist complained that the economy could get too overheated, whatever that means.
As someone recently observed, for the first 7-1/2 years of the Obama administration as the media sees it, everything was predecessor George W. Bush’s fault. For the last six months, it was Trump’s fault. Plus, Big Social suppressed or shadow-banned information that was unfavorable to Hillary Clinton.
As things unfold, whether you like him or not, Trump will make some good decisions, some bad ones, let loose with some off-the-wall remarks, and get into more feuds with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and others. His populist platform, if implemented, appears to benefit most day-to-day Americans, however.
No office-holder is above criticism, and stuff will happen in the Trump administration that deserves close scrutiny if not condemnation. When it comes to the former New York real estate mogul and Celebrity Apprentice host, during the campaign and in the transition, the media has already proven that it will interpret every benchmark, and run with every miscue, real or imagined, in the worst possible light.
The nature of politics is that it always disappoints, however, and contains a lot of smoke and mirrors, which is perhaps the best argument for the smallest government possible, no matter who is in office.
Again, the naysaying mainstream (or fake-stream as some have called it) media – the same news organizations revealed by WikiLeaks to have been shamelessly colluding with the Hillary Clinton campaign — will find fault and stay on the anti-Trump attack. In so doing, the journalism industry will have little or no credibility in the context of legitimate Trump criticism.
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This is the same media that fawned over Obama for eight years (including lobbing extreme softballs at his farewell press conference on Wednesday), ignored scandals, gullibly accepted virtually every White House pronouncement at face value, and tried to orchestrate a Hillary Clinton presidency. The media also brushed off the administration’s war on whistleblowers or freedom of information as well as spying on their news organization colleagues in some instances.
Recall that the media accused the Bush administration of assaulting civil liberties and shredding the constitution, but had virtually nothing to say when Obama bypassed Congress with executive orders. As the Trump administration takes office with an associated rollout of executive order reversals, the media will insist that Trump “follow the law,” given its new-found respect for constitutional principles (except for the Electoral College, that is).
A few other memories.
Remember when Hillary Clinton and virtually the entire media echo chamber blasted Trump for an unwillingness to accept the election results in advance? Even since Election Day, it’s the Democrats that have refused to accept the election results. And for Democrats to talk about voter fraud elevates hypocrisy and projection to a new level.
Remember when Obama and the Democrat-media complex ridiculed 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney for warning about the Russian threat? Now Obama and his party seemed hell-bent on restarting a Cold War with Russia, although they had little say when China hacked into millions of federal government records.
Remember when the press was so worried about the politicization of the Justice Department under G.W. Bush, but remained silent when Obama presided over the most politicized Justice Department in history?
Liberal columnist Joe Klein, no fan of Trump by any means, wrote in Time magazine about the media’s role moving forward.
“This is a sensitive and perhaps dangerous moment for the media. Journalists will have contradictory functions: the relentless pursuit of the truth in serious matters like the Russian affair will have to be matched with an open-minded willingness to give credit where it is due. Trump hasn’t actually done anything yet, and his opponents are acting as if the sky has fallen. They are playing into his hands: if you begin with constant outrage, there’s no place to go when something truly outrageous happens. And what if this turns out to be a popular presidency? It is entirely possible that a rapprochement with the Russians, based on common commercial interests, will be good for the peace of the world. It is possible that Trump’s ideological appointees will clean out the cobwebs in departments and agencies like Health and Human Services, Labor, Education and the EPA. It is possible that Trump’s public shaming of manufacturers like Carrier will make American corporations think twice before going elsewhere…”
The media has apparently learned nothing from all the skewed, manipulated polls in which they wish-fulfilled a Hillary Clinton win in the election because they are now putting out skewed polls with an oversampling of Democrats that show Trump with a low approval rating. The media is also apparently cooking data to artificially inflate Obama’s approval rating as he leaves office.
From Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist:
“One may have hoped that the media would respond to their 2016 failures and resulting lack of credibility by reforming. Instead, it seems that many in political media are quadrupling down on the mistakes that served them and their readers and viewers so poorly in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s surprise victory in November. It’s impossible to track all the ways in which the media are leaning into their bias, their unnecessary hostility, and their abandonment of journalistic principles…”
In short, the most culpable perpetrators of fake news are those mainstream outlets that claim to be most concerned about it.
There was a lot of airtime and online chatter about the rise of hate crimes since Trump won the White House, but very little coverage of an accompanying rise in hate crime hoaxes. Or that most of the street violence was committed against rather by Trump supporters.
With their new-found love for the CIA and other such offices, the media also seems to have suffered collective amnesia about numerous instances where intelligence agency reports were politicized.
News organizations have also made an issue about Trump cabinet nominees disagreeing with him during their confirmation hearing testimony. If Trump actually has authoritarian tendencies, wouldn’t those differences be something that should be lauded as part of celebrating diversity and freedom of speech?
As far as the self-involved Hollywood celebrities and entertainers bashing Donald Trump even though he mixed with them, and vice versa, during his career: First, to keep their brands viable in stage-and-screen liberal enclaves, and stay in the in-crowd, it’s somewhat understandable that at least publicly they would jump aboard the anti-Trump train. Second, if Trump truly was a dangerous despot, these celebs would either be cowering under their beds or seeking ways to collaborate to maintain their pampered lifestyles. Moreover, do you really think that those who regularly engage in all kinds of edgy behavior on and off the screen are actually offended by Trump’s vulgarities?
Speaking of entertainment, if last Wednesday is any indication, Trump’s press conferences will be must-see TV.
Do you think that over the next four (or eight) years, President Donald Trump will get a fair shake from the media?
[Featured Image by Evan Vucci/AP Images]
