Donald Trump’s communications team is defending The Boss by repeating a troubling dodge.
It is that the president is a human being and that he shouldn’t have to endure constant attacks without responding to his critics as he has done.
Deputy White House press aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders was called out the other day by White House reporter who skewered her for the White House’s constant yammering about “fake news.” He said the media are simply “doing their job.” Sanders objected to the gist of what he said and implied that the media, in effect, are conspiring to concoct reports designed to put the president in a negative light.
Sanders is as wrong as wrong gets.
As for Trump’s human instincts, I feel compelled to remind the young press flack that the president’s recent predecessors all avoided the kind of petulance exhibited by the current leader of the free world.
Barack Obama also was hammered repeatedly during his two terms in office. Did he say anything even remotely similar about his critics that we are hearing from Donald Trump? Umm. Nope.
George W. Bush his share of fire from opponents as well. Did the president respond in kind? Did he go on social media to portray the media as “the enemy of the people”? No once again. Instead, President Bush understood what all presidents have known, which is that the media perform a valuable service in keeping public officials accountable for their deeds and statements.
Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford all knew as president that criticism goes with the territory. Even Richard Nixon, who came closest to the Trump model of media response, knew better than to say out loud that the media were the enemy.
I no longer have any serious hope that Donald Trump will grasp what his most recent predecessors all knew about the media and their relationship with the president.
I do, though, expect better from his spokespeople, who should cease insulting Americans with the idiocy that the president is reacting like any normal, run-of-the-mill human being.
The men who preceded him were human beings, too.