If there is an explanation for this sudden and disturbing flipflop in American politics, it may lie in the way Trump and his colleagues view media coverage of the presidential campaign that brought them to power. Creeping, or galloping, authoritarianism may be another term. “Trumpery,” a term in increasing use, represents a style of governance utterly unfamiliar to the American experience.
The democratic underpinning of our society, on which we have always based our hopes and dreams, is in jeopardy. With President Trump in the White House, the evidence strongly suggests that this concept is now in doubt. It depends, in other words, on a triangular democratic distribution of civic responsibility. It depends not only on good pitching but also on reliable hitting and solid defense. The other team has a more traditional strategy, dating back almost 250 years. One depends only on its rookie pitcher, the one with the wicked curve ball, wild enough to hit a few batters, yet cocky, utterly convinced he has the right stuff to win what he sees as the final inning of the final game of a bitterly fought world series. As best we can judge it, so soon after his inauguration, Donald Trump’s unorthodox presidency represents a new political ballgame in this country. If, on any given morning, even before breakfast, he pinches himself, and asks, “Is this real? Is it my finger that is on the nuclear button? Am I really president?,” the answer is yes! Let us hope the president understands, as quickly as possible, that there is a vast difference between campaigning, when winning an election defines success, and governing, when balancing competing interests at home and abroad defines success. Already, consistent with his campaign vows and intertwined with Bannon’s odd visions of an onrushing global apocalypse, he has rushed to transform domestic politics and to frighten the world. Here is a vast difference between campaigning, when winning an election defines success, and governing, when balancing competing interests at home and abroad defines success.ĭonald Trump, the unlikeliest of presidents in a line running back to George Washington, is now arguably the most powerful politician in the world. “What hath God wrought?” they might now be asking, fearfully anticipating what’s next for America. Quite the contrary, Trump is a self-absorbed, ego-driven, former reality TV president, narcissistic in many ways, obsessed with cable news (for him, the fount of all knowledge, where, in the words of one columnist, “every issue, every minute, is momentous, every hiccup is a crisis, and every criticism of him is a calumny.”) Trump is an outsider, a real estate magnate, who has never, before now, held political office, never served in the military, and yet managed, in a totally unpredictable presidential campaign, the closest to political madness in recent history, to diminish and demolish 16 other GOP candidates and then, against all odds, it seemed, his favored democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, leaving the experts in politics, journalism, and diplomacy shaking their heads in utter bewilderment. Can we now expect Donald Trump to do the same? Should his current problems mushroom into a full-blown crisis? No.
#Trumps animosity shows no sign letting professional
Nixon never thought of himself as God’s gift to the Oval Office he was a political professional who twisted the law, lied to cover his crime, recognized reality, and resigned in disgrace. Oops! What have we here? Is Trump simply Richard Nixon reborn with a populist message? No.
#Trumps animosity shows no sign letting full
In case, somehow, you did not get the full impact of this message, his Darth Vader shadow, Stephen Bannon, said that the media ought to be “embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.” His chief of staff later emphasizing, yes, that is exactly what he means-“enemy of the American people.”
The FAKE NEWS media (failing is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! CNN-“terrible.” Buzzfeed-“Garbage.” Then, on top of it all, this presidential tweet, dripping with anger and threat: The press, overall, he says, is a “disgrace,…false, horrible, fake reporting.” It is “out of control…fantastic.” Reporters are “very dishonest people,” their coverage he describes as “an outrage.” The New York Times-a “failing” newspaper.
But it is the press, or the media, to use its more fashionable moniker, that is the target of the president’s special fury. It has also declared war on the judiciary, also on the Democratic leadership of Congress, sometimes even on the Republican leadership of Congress. The Trump administration has declared war on the American press.
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