Donald John Trump Sr. just can’t stop attacking the media.
He demands that media outlets fire reporters who make mistakes. He calls media organizations he dislikes “fake news.” He tears into reporters at press conferences.
The president has labeled the media as “the enemy of the American people.”
Here is something he needs to grasp: The media own their mistakes; they hold themselves accountable, which is something the president appears to be genetically incapable of doing as it regards his own missteps.
For the life of me I cannot grasp how this guy gets away with what he says and how he attacks the press with such abandon. The media’s job, according to the often-stated truism, is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Every president who preceded Donald Trump has had run-ins with the media. Yet they have accepted the media’s role in a free society. Trump, though, doesn’t grasp that reality. His insatiable appetite for positive coverage blinds him. When he doesn’t get the kind of affirmation he believes he deserves — even when he absolutely doesn’t — he flies into rages.
Is that reasonable? Is it rational? Is that the way a president behaves?
It would be easy to pass this all off as so much silliness, except for this key element: Donald Trump is the Fake News Purveyor in Chief.
He is the one who lies incessantly. He makes contentions that have been disproven with regularity. Trump makes outrageous assertions about his foes and boasts of triumphs that are figments of his imagination.
When the media report his lies, distortions, fabrications, prevarications they are merely doing their job.
The truth is something that Donald Trump simply cannot stand.