How the Media Try to Lay Waste to the Trump Administration

[Joe Cooper]

The progressive media, and their left-wing allies, have been on an
endless binge of Trump-bashing that began even before Donald Trump took
office as president. This Trump derangement syndrome results from the
fact that during the campaign, and later when he was elected, Trump took
firm hold of the national debate and reshaped it in his image. But
progressives have their own dueling national narrative, one which they
are trying to reassert through the use of allegations of Russian
collusion and through a war on “fake news.”

Nicholas Kristof, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, argues that
progressives need to show a greater respect for the citizens who elected
Trump. “The blunt truth is that if we care about a progressive agenda, we
simply can’t write off 46 percent of the electorate,” he writes. “So by
all means stand up to Trump, point out that he’s a charlatan and resist
his initiatives. But remember that social progress means winning over
voters in flyover country, and that it’s difficult to recruit voters whom
you’re simultaneously castigating as despicable, bigoted imbeciles.”

The endless vitriol is not just aimed at Trump voters, but at the
President himself. In “Public-School Students Take On Fake News,” The New
Yorker magazine describes how an after-school program launched by non-
profit Mighty Writers “teaches media literacy to kids.” Media literacy,
in this case, means being taught to hate and disparage our President.
Annette John-Hall, “a former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist who now
reports for public radio,” asked these kids, “When you think about our
new President, give me a one-word descriptor.” Some of their responses:
“‘Evil.’ ‘Dumb.’ ‘Racist.’ ‘Sexist.’ ‘Disrespectful.’”

The endless news coverage disparaging Trump is clearly working.

According to The New Yorker, John-Hall responded, “There are facts to
back up every single word you just used.”

This is nothing but pure indoctrination of future generations under the
guise of public service. Our children are being taught not to
differentiate between facts and lies, but to blindly repeat radical left-
wing dogma.

The war on “fake news” could extend into the censorship of social media.
Former Federal Election Commission chair Ann Ravel told a UC Berkeley
audience that “We know that there’s a lot of campaigning that’s moved to
the Internet, whether it’s through fake news or just outright advertising
and there is almost no regulation of this, very little.” In the past,
Ravel has called for the regulation of political websites such as The
Drudge Report.

“Ravel claimed that the use of Facebook and other social media platforms
by political campaigns is a problem,” reports Breitbart News. She also
claimed that “by 2020 most of the advertising is going to move from
television to the Internet”—i.e., to unregulated space.

But much as Trump, as a candidate, gained free advertising through his
appearances on television news networks, the comedy show circuit has
become a way to mobilize against his presidency. This is where much fake
news exists today, where thinly-disguised vitriol masquerading as comedy
or satire is aimed at Trump and his supporters in the name of humor.
These comedy hosts can, in the name of levity, repeat any falsehood they
fancy and feed it to an unsuspecting audience. On “Real Time with Bill
Maher,” Maher’s guest, pro-Trump CNN contributor Jeffrey Lord, said that
the Russians didn’t actually interfere with the vote tallies on Election
Day. “Unless you can manipulate the votes in the machine, you haven’t
done it,” said Lord.

Maher responded that “There are other ways you can affect an election,
and one of them is to hack the emails of one side and release those as a
slow drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.” When Lord said that the country
needed to move forward, Maher replied, “Not if the country is being led
by someone who was put there by a foreign power.”

According to Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper, there is “no evidence” that the Russians colluded with President
Trump to swing the election. And there is no evidence that the Russians
interfered with election tallies. Yet allegations of Russian connections
have become an article of faith for the mainstream media and liberal
comedy hosts. But as we’ve pointed out on many occasions, Hillary
Clinton’s financial and business relations with the Russians far exceeded
anything that could be attributed to Trump.

CBS’s Stephen Colbert, of late show fame, included a sketch on his show
which ended with a setup with “Trump/Putin 2016.” On NBC’s Saturday Night
Live, besides Alec Baldwin’s ridiculous caricature of Trump that bears
virtually no resemblance to reality, the show continues to parade a
shirtless Putin acting as if he is the puppeteer of Trump. They all get
in on the act: Samantha Bee, Chelsea Handler, the women of The View.
Apparently it’s very good for ratings. And sadly, far too many viewers of
these shows think they are getting actual, factual news. In fact, the
venomous hatred packaged as clever commentary coming from the likes of
Colbert, Maher, SNL and others creates a poisonous atmosphere for
discussing serious issues. But, in reality, they aren’t that much
different than the prime time line-up on MSNBC or CNN in terms of the
hatred and negativity toward Trump.

Peter Weber, writing for The Week, asks, “Will Stephen Colbert lose his
mojo when we inevitably get bored with Trump?” Josef Adalian of Vulture
tells Weber that Colbert owes his rise in popularity to Trump. “But
‘Trump-related programming with a strong partisan edge is doing
spectacularly well right now,’ and it seems clear Trump’s presidency has
been ‘a significant factor in pushing Colbert over the top in recent
weeks,’” observes Adalian, according to Weber.

And this mindset isn’t confined to just so-called late night and comedy
shows. The Hollywood Reporter recently cited many scripted shows—such as
Quantico, Madam Secretary, Scandal, and Designated Survivor—that include
story lines or characters that are meant to be disparaging to Trump.
After eight years of silence while scandal after scandal plagued the
Obama administration, though it was rarely reported that way, these
Hollywood honchos are feeling all anti-establishment again, and morally
superior to boot.

Colbert isn’t just acting like a partisan—he, and other hosts, just make
stuff up, sometimes using real headlines. They’re free to do it. Former
FEC officials like Ravel shouldn’t look to solve the problem of fake news
by censorship and regulating the Internet. There is plenty of fake news
still being broadcast and published by mainstream news entities such as
CNN, NBC, The New York Times and all the usual suspects. But this fake
news, as well as news reporting on the alleged lack of Obama scandals,
sells a narrative to the nation that undercuts Trump’s presidency and
indoctrinates American citizens.

Source: http://bit.ly/2pxrrmF

[Hiring]

Post by Joe Cooper
The progressive media

Yawn.

[Joe Cooper]

Post by Joe Cooper
The progressive media

Yawn.

I am sorry. Do multisyllabic words bore you?