Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Trump

THE “CRISIS AT THE BORDER”

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In a kind of “coals to Newcastle” move the Washington Post today is providing a cheat sheet for assessing the truthfulness of President Trump’s comments on the “crisis on the border” tonight.

Clearly we don’t really need this. Virtually everything Trump will say can be guaranteed to be a lie, an exaggeration, or a total fantasy. He has proven over and over that he knows nothing about anything and understands less.

There is some understandable puzzlement over why our TV networks will be televising this pile of verbal bullshit, but let’s just think of it as an episode of Cirque d’Soleil with a crazy ringmaster talking without a net of facts. Then once we have cleaned up the vomit we can come back to the TV for Pelosi and Schumer to suggest how we can replace the clowns. Or is that hoping for too much? Yeah, probably.

TRUMP TRAIN LEAVES RAILS

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Difficult to ignore the fact that our President* is fiddling while the White House burns. Well, actually  he does not even know what a fiddle is, let alone how to play it. But the walls are closing in on El Pradre El Mar-a-Lago and he is incapable of doing anything beyond shouting at reporters as he runs or stumbles  to the marine helicopters to take him away. Away , anywhere captain, just take me away.

Special prosecutor Mueller and his staff may have enough to put Trump and his crime family away for centuries IF he had not been “elected” by the electoral college. So what we have is a President* with innate insecurities and a major case of unjustified narcissism combined with serious criminal bahviors struggling to find the magic move that will save him and his children from their just desserts.

It will play out but I believe that we are witnessing the beginning of the end. Trump’s former lawyer and staff have or are all pleading guilty to various felonies and Trump’s children have all been stained and are vulnerable. His son-in-law is existentially complicit int he murder of Washington Post columnist Jamai Khashoggi and Mueller is now looking at the money. This last is Trump’s so-called redline. Ha! It’s always been about the money and that is where the truth will lead the investigation.

Trump’s most likely play is to fire Mueller – either by the seriously weird and tainted Mathew Whitaker or his likely successor William Barr, who two years ago wrote a lengthy memo describing his view that Mueller was getting into inappropriate areas.

So, two more government officials will possibly sacrifice their personal honor and integrity (recognizing that Whitaker has very little honor or integrity) such as it is – on the altar of Trump’s insatiable, undeserving ego.

The Threat of Seasonal Mental Illness

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So here we are entering the holiday season while President* Trump is not-so-slowly going insane in front of our eyes. He wants his Wall or his Steel Slats, or Beaded Curtain, or maybe Shower Curtain, and if he doesn’t get it he has decided to punish the entire country. He’s like the senile old nuns who used to punish the whole class when someone wrote “Sister Mary Grace has Bad Habits” on the blackboard.

But while the seriousness of the offenses are similar, there is a significant difference between putting your head down on the desk for an hour and watching savings disappear because some fruitcake wants a useless Wall that he already said would be built by the Mexicans. But, an anxious nation waits while a shell of a man who is not enjoying especially good mental health tries to make himself feel better by screwing the entire country he was elected (sic) to serve.

CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP. SAD!

The Press, Facts and Reality

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In about 13 months the U.S. will have elected a new president. That is a long time away, but already it is not going well, with a Republican field of fact-resistant candidates and a Democrat field led by a candidate with a couple of self inflicted wounds. There is no useful purpose running through a list of candidates that until recently included a governor under indictment, another governor  looking at possible indictment,  a third who dropped out after his poll numbers disappeared, a couple of religious hustlers – one protestant, one catholic -  a woman campaigning on a record of running a major U.S.company into the ground, a Southern governor who has destroyed his state’s education and health programs to kiss down to the GOP base, a former Lehman Bros. operative running on – yes! – economic expertise, a brain surgeon with zero political experience, and a narcissistic TV loudmouth.

Some initially saw the GOP race as an entertainment but with all candidates given a degree of credibility strange things can happen. And the press tends to provide that credibility to practically any candidate, regardless of their tenuous grasp of reality.

It is easy to criticize the press. While no one is innocent, culpability does vary from source to source. It is silly to complain about Fox News – serious news is not what they do. They are a propaganda machine and they feed the beast and are good at it. MSNBC serves a similar function for the left, with the important exception that people like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes (an actual journalist) maintain an attachment to facts and reality.

But what about the “serious” “objective” press, like the Washington Post, the NY Times and subscriber supported PBS Newshour? Would a serious press treat Trump seriously? Well, as it turns out – yes. His poll numbers are up therefore he gets an if not free, at least reduced fare, ride. Is there any reason to report that when Trump says we need to remove 11 million people from the U.S. he is suggesting an impossibility? Is there any reason when reporting that Carly Fiorina wants to defund Planned Parenthood because she claims to have viewed a video of alive babies being slaughtered by PP  not to mention that no such video exists? Are climate change deniers entitled to a free ride away from scientific fact? Candidates’ statements typically are reported without filters of facts partly because it contributes to the narrative of political campaigns as horseraces and allows journalists to produce words without doing the real work of journalism.

Monday is “politics night” on the PBS Newshour and last Monday their panel discussed the current GOP race and with a wink wink here, and a wink wink there, they disposed of Wisconsin Governor Walker’s removal from the race without discussing his real policy and personal deficiencies, which are considerable. It was the horserace – he could not raise enough money they said – well, there might be a reason for that and maybe that could be discussed. Stories like Walker’s claim that he is saving Wisconsin’s education system by cutting the state’s premier University’s budget and spending the money instead on a basketball arena, and Carly Fiorina’s manufactured story on Planned Parenthood are reported without comment. Overall too many journalists seem to believe that they are not to call a lie a lie when the liar is an”important” politician. And in the name of “balance” they seem too often to be able to find someone able to make up facts to denigrate Planned Parenthood or deny climate change.

PBS Newshour does a fine job when they bring in real expert analysts but they have a tendency to head toward the on-the-one-hand-this, on-the-other-hand-that face offs, sometimes providing opposing party politicians air time to exhibit what is frequently an appalling lack of substance, apparently aimed at pleasing their bases. Newspapers are improving their approach to analysis by opening opportunities for experts to write focussed oped pieces that frequently serve as correctives to developing myths. We would all  benefit from more of this and less timid acceptance of all that comes out of a politician’s mouth.