THE MAINSTREAM PRESS SHOULD JUST STAY HOME

 

…The press set-up at Wilks-Barre campaign rally where they were booed, jeered and taunted. 

There is no reason that any journalist should subject themselves to Trump’s disgusting treatment.

It’s time to stop playing the political game according to Trump’s rules.

The two latest untrue items that are part of Trump’s latest rallies, such as the recent two in St Louis and Wilks-Barre, come directly from Trump.  Including, that the “Russia thing is a hoax,” and “All you guys out there are the disgusting “fake news”.  And this last part is directed by Trump to the legit reporters, penned in on an elevated platform in the middle of, or at the back of the arena, filming the proceedings and typing on their laptops.  All this while the president of the United States points at them, provoking thousands of Trump supporters to boo them, jeer them, taunt them and chant “CNN sucks!”.

By going through the tape, we determined that the president attacked the mainstream press as “the enemy of the American people” no fewer than 21 times in his 75-minute speech, accusing them of fakery and conspiracy to suppress his voters.

This is all just the cherry on the top of the sundae for President Trump, and I personally think it should stop now!

His attacks that night on the press coverage spanned a long list of topics including the 2016 campaign, trade, the economy, NATO, Russia, and of course, his outstanding education, and even his meeting with Queen Elizabeth II.  But there were more attacks on the press than on Democrats.  Of course, Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, both got favorable comments.

A demagogue like Trump needs to make the enemy threat clear and present, but the Democrats weren’t in the room, so he focused on the journalists.

Because the Journalists were clearly visible on their risers, Trump just had to say, “It looks like the Academy Awards,” reveling in his so called “evil media’s attention”. Once again, the press became the boogeyman against which Trump whipped his crowds into a frenzy.

CNN’s brave Jim Acosta was taunted by the crowd, which had been chanting “fake news,” “go home” and “CNN sucks.”   Jim Acosta spoke up saying: “We’re staying right here. We’re going to do our job and will report honestly on this rally to all of our viewers tonight.”

But I think what the mainstream media should do is get together and have a rotating “Pool Journalist” like they have for Air Force One trips.  That way, on the riser, there would only be the one Pool Journalist and their camera, with of course, Fox News and their camera.  The riser would virtually be deserted and there wouldn’t be the group for Trump to point out and have the crowd whipped up as his foil.

It has gotten so bad that Trump would occasionally, as he did on the campaign trail, get the crowd so riled up, many journalists had been ready to run should the crowd finally get out of hand.

You will recall in Charlottesville when that idiot demonstrator drove a car into a crowd and killed a young woman.  Many reporters have said that, at Trump rallies, they have more than once, expected something very bad to happen.  There is no reason that a journalist should subject themselves to that kind of treatment, just for bringing us the rantings of our deranged leader.

Here is an example of what came out of Trump's mouth at the Wikes-Barre rally:

• ·       “Oh my God, what fake news!”

• ·       “Only negative stories from the fakers back there.”

• ·       “What a group!”

• ·       “The media are ‘horrible, horrendous people’”

• ·       President Trump criticized the media, calling many reports "fake news".

• ·       “Whatever happened to honest reporting?”

• ·       “They don’t report it. They only make up stories.”

• ·       “They are the fake, fake, disgusting news!”

• ·       “They were giving you phony numbers.”

• ·       “Why don’t you report that?”

• ·       “These people back here, these horrible, horrendous people.”

Jim Acosta’s statements were a noble sentiment, but I think it’s better to just “go home”, so Trump can’t use the rally scenes to his benefit.

In fact, at Wilkes-Barre, Trump’s son Eric retweeted a video of Trump supporters chanting “CNN sucks” at Jim Acosta during Trump’s stand-up, adding the hashtag #Truth. The president then retweeted his son’s tweet.

Likewise, little was gained by Acosta’s insistence, in a next day televised White House briefing, where he asked that Sarah Huckabee Sanders “say, right here, at this briefing, that the press . . . are not the enemy of the people. I think we deserve that.”

Of course, she would do no such thing.  She said, “the president has made his position known”, and instead used the occasion to portray herself as a victim of harassment by the press.  Acosta walked out of the press briefing to protest Sanders’s “shameful” behavior.

But also as usual, Trump kept up his false statements saying “U.S. Steel is opening up seven plants”, wrong,  reckless accusations against his own generals, the Justice Department and even the Queen of England, and the disgusting “many  immigrants are “stone-cold killers”.

Trump also said that his campaign claim that Mexican immigrants are murderers and rapists was “peanuts compared to what turns out to be the truth”.

It’s time for the mainstream press to stay home and stop becoming part of Trump’s sick story.

Copyright G.Ater  2018