On February 24, 2017, in an apparent orchestration between President Trump’s roadshow, which headlined the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Florida, and his Washington D.C. home-based puppets at the White House in synchronization, the press was yet again attacked.
The president’s attack spewed from his mouth like acrid black bile. He said, “And I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake. A few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. They are the enemy of the people. . . . They’re very dishonest people. . . . A source says that Donald Trump ‘is a horrible, horrible human being.’ Let ’em say it to my face.”1
Okay, Mr. President – you are a horrendous parasitic lifeform. You are inhuman, void of any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Happy now?
Not to be outdone by his puppeteer, in near unison with the president’s performance in Florida, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer blocked bastions of the free press from access to a press briefing. CNN, which was blocked from attending, reported, “The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Politico, BuzzFeed, the BBC and the Guardian were also among those excluded from the meeting, which was held in White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s office. The meeting, which is known as a gaggle, was held in lieu of the daily televised Q-and-A session in the White House briefing room.”2
So, the gaggle was effectively gagged by Spicer. In a show of solidarity, some of the invited press boycotted the meeting . . . while others attended. Those standing in solidarity were “reporters from The Associated Press, Time magazine and USA Today.” Each “decided in the moment to boycott the briefing because of how it was handled,”3 CNN reported.
Then, in another quintessential attack on the free press and the media’s vital role in a vibrant democracy by acting as the people’s checks and balances of power, in his usual sophomoric fashion the president yet again tweeted presidential policy. On Saturday, February 25, 2017, the day after his CPAC performance, came this childish statement. “I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year. . . .”4 Trump tweeted.
Then this came to light: “White House spokesman Sean Spicer assembled the group of communication staffers in his office in the West Wing, scolded them about details of private conversations appearing in media reports and made them surrender their phones and other electronic devices to be examined.”5
Every time that I think that I have seen it all, Trump raises the bar higher. On the upside of that bar is the fact that Trump has energized opposition to the GOP’s policies in a way that could not have happened without the rise of Trump’s murky, sewage spewing mouth and cesspool swamp. So, thanks for that, President Trump.
This unrelenting attack on the press by the president and his puppets should be repulsive to all true patriots. If we lose the press, we lose democracy. If we lose democracy, we lose America. If we lose America, we lose liberty. If we lose liberty, all free nations will lose. We need to make President Trump and the GOP the greatest losers in history. We need to make Trump a loser through impeachment. Then we need to make the GOP losers through a historical landslide election in 2018.
Only then will We The People be able to Make America Great Again.
Post Scriptum: Joseph de Maistre, French diplomat, writer, and philosopher said, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” We deserve Trump, but we also deserve better, much better.
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