Trump Erupts at Mainstream Media After WaPo Hit Piece: 'They Are Now Beyond Fake, They Are Corrupt'
As an in-kind donation to the Democratic Party, it was a doozy.
The Washington Post, a once-proud journalistic institution that has followed the rest of the American media into the gutter of partisan politics, decided to celebrate the unofficial end of summer this weekend with a long and remorselessly negative postmortem of how President Donald Trump spent the past three months.
And Trump spent at least part of his Labor Day holiday firing right back.
The impetus for the president’s ire couldn’t be called a “news” story by any reasonable person. Nor was it an “analysis” in the sense that it approached a topic and weighed both sides before pronouncing judgment.
The article was a screed, a campaign volley as loaded and as disingenuous as any 30-second television spot at the height of an election season — and Trump’s response actually treated it with more respect than it deserved.
The focus of Trump’s initial tweet was the story’s reference to his supposedly “racist attacks” on the four freshman Democrats collectively known as “the Squad”: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
The Amazon Washington Post did a story that I brought racist attacks against the “Squad.” No, they brought racist attacks against our Nation. All I do is call them out for the horrible things they have said. The Democrats have become the Party of the Squad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 2, 2019
It’s one of the more curious aspects of the Trump years that the mainstream media has no problem labeling presidential words as “racist” with no reason other than the fact that his particular political opponents happen to be minorities.
The reality is, the fact that the four radical faces of the new Democratic Party all happen to be women “of color,” as the saying goes today, isn’t the point of the president’s attacks, and it’s a good chance even The Post knows that.
But the point of The Post’s piece — like The New York Times’ coverage of Trump’s speech after the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that started the month of August – was not to convey information.
It was to coddle the biased beliefs of The Post’s overwhelmingly liberal readership.
What else is there to make of headline like this?
“Trump’s lost summer: Aides claim victory, but others see incompetence and intolerance.”
The writing of the article itself was just as slanted:
“The two months between Independence Day and Labor Day offered a fresh and vivid portrait of the president as seen by Trump’s critics — incompetent, indecisive, intolerant and ineffective.”
It’s appalling, really. But at least it’s clear.
One of the many benefits of the Trump years is that the mainstream media outlets have felt comfortable enough to lower their mask of “objectivity.” No thinking American believes the media is giving anything like a fair picture of the presidency.
And that’s what made Trump’s responses Monday so effective.
“The LameStream Media has gone totally CRAZY! They write whatever they want, seldom have sources (even though they say they do), never do ‘fact checking’ anymore, and are only looking for the ‘kill,’” he tweeted. “They take good news and make it bad. They are now beyond Fake, they are Corrupt.”
….The good news is that we are winning. Our real opponent is not the Democrats, or the dwindling number of Republicans that lost their way and got left behind, our primary opponent is the Fake News Media. In the history of our Country, they have never been so bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 2, 2019
That last part sums it up in a nutshell.
The president’s biggest opposition at the moment really isn’t the Democratic Party, which is in the middle of a fratricidal power struggle that’s likely to continue long past the time a nominee is named to run against Trump.
His biggest opposition is a news media — and an overall entertainment and cultural hierarchy — that has refused to accept his presidency since even before it began.
The good news for Trump and his supporters is that the news media has long since lost its power to convince Americans of the truth of its reports. Average Americans don’t trust the news media any more than the media trusts average Americans. That’s not a healthy relationship in a democratic society, but it’s the one the media created — has insisted on creating.
What The Washington Post story did was give all Americans a sharp reminder — in stark relief — of just what lengths Trump’s opponents in the media will go to attack him.
And by providing that reminder, they’ve blunted the power of the attacks themselves.
As in-kind donations go, The Post’s broadside was a doozy of a gift to the Democratic Party.
But as Trump’s response showed, it’s the kind of gift that could backfire very, very badly.
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