You see, Dana sweetie, if you only scream FIRE! when the arsonist is right-handed, you aren't a journalist, you're just another fascist (evildoer) with an agenda...
EXHIBIT A:
Trump getting exactly what he deserves - Record-Courier
by Dana Milbank
WASHINGTON -- The president has the greatest self-pity. The best!
"No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly," Donald Trump said this week as he heard the special prosecutor's footsteps.
Thus did our assured head of state, equal parts narcissistic and uninformed, rank his treatment worse than that of Benito Mussolini (executed corpse beaten and hung upside down in public square), Oliver Cromwell (body disinterred, drawn and quartered, hanged and head hung on spike), Leon Trotsky (exiled and killed with icepick to the skull), and the headless Louis XVI, Mary Queen of Scots and Charles I.
Trump hasn't been treated badly. He has been treated exactly as he deserved, a reaction commensurate with the action. He took on the institution of a free press -- and it fought back. Trump came to office after intimidating publishers, barring journalists from covering him and threatening to rewrite press laws, and he has sought to discredit the "fake news" media at every chance. Instead, he wound up inspiring a new golden age in American journalism.
Trump provoked the extraordinary work of reporters who blew wide open the Russia election scandal, the contacts between Russia and top Trump officials, and interference by Trump in the FBI investigation. This week's appointment of a special prosecutor is a direct result of their work
I suspect they won't be getting Presidential Medals of Freedom anytime soon, so let's celebrate some of them here. At The Washington Post: Adam Entous, Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, Matt Zapotosky, Devlin Barrett, Sari Horwitz, Greg Jaffe and Julie Tate, along with columnist David Ignatius. At the New York Times: Michael Schmidt, Matthew Rosenberg, Adam Goldman, Matt Apuzzo and Scott Shane. The two rivals, combined, have produced one breathtaking scoop after another, including:
The Post's Feb. 9 report that national security adviser Michael Flynn, contrary to the Trump administration's claims, talked with the Russian ambassador about U.S. sanctions before Trump took office. Flynn was out soon thereafter.
The Post's March 1 report that Jeff Sessions also spoke with the Russian ambassador but did not disclose the contacts when asked about possible contacts during his confirmation as attorney general. He was forced to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
The Post's March 28 report that the Trump administration tried to block former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying on the Trump campaign's possible Russia ties. She later testified about the White House's failure to act on warnings about Flynn.
The Times's March 30 report that two White House officials helped provide Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with intelligence that Nunes made public. Nunes was forced to recuse himself from the committee's probe.
The Post's report this week that Trump shared highly classified intelligence with Russian officials, jeopardizing the cooperation of allies.
And the final blow: The Times's report this week that Trump asked FBI Director James B. Comey to shut down the FBI's Flynn investigation, according to a contemporaneous memo Comey wrote before Trump fired him.
There were many more, and other outlets have flourished, too. On one day this week, the United States awoke to a report from Reuters that the Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russians; a McClatchy report that Flynn, who had been paid as a Turkish representative, stopped a military plan that Turkey opposed; a Times report that the Trump team knew Flynn was under investigation before he started work at the White House; and a Post report that the House majority leader told colleagues last year that he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin was paying Trump.
This journalistic triumph, made possible by nameless government officials who risked their jobs and their freedom to get the truth out, is all the more satisfying because it came as a corrective after one of the sorriest episodes in modern journalism: the uncritical, unfiltered and unending coverage of Trump -- particularly by cable news -- that propelled him to the Republican nomination and onward to the presidency.
It's a great relief to have special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III now keeping his eyes on the executive -- a regent, if you will, to protect against future abuses. This doesn't mean Trump won't nuke Denmark tomorrow. But those racked by anxiety for the past four months can exhale: Grown-ups within the government have restored some order.
Trump may feel as if he's been drawn and quartered, but what he's experienced is the power of a free press in a free country. That is entirely fair, and fitting.
And straight from Washington's other newspaper comes...
“We just got back from the Middle East,” Trump announced. “We just got back from Saudi Arabia.”
At this, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, put his forehead in his palm.
Did Trump not know Israel is in the Middle East? Did he not know he was in Israel? There was little time to contemplate this mystery, because Trump was moving on to generate more puzzlement at his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
The two men had wrapped up a news conference and reporters were shouting questions when Trump volunteered a confession. “Just so you understand,” he announced, “I never mentioned the word or the name Israel in conversation. Never mentioned it during that conversation. They are all saying I did. So you had another story wrong. Never mentioned the word Israel.”
What a fucking dumbass. We were lucky that everybody Dana ever voted for was a genius.
Thus did Trump apparently confirm that Israel was the unnamed ally that had provided sensitive intelligence to the United States that Trump then handed over to Russia. U.S. officials were concerned that if the ally were identified, Russia might try to disrupt the source.
Mark Twain wrote “The Innocents Abroad” in 1869 while traveling through the Holy Land and Europe. This week, Trump wrote his own chapter as he bumbled his way through Saudi Arabia and Israel before heading for Rome. Americans by now have become accustomed to perpetual chaos. Now lucky friends and allies are seeing the Trump tornado firsthand.
After Monday night’s attack at a concert in Manchester, England, Trump reacted with outrage and sorrow for those “murdered by evil losers in life.” But then he made this aside: “I won’t call them monsters because they would like that term. . . . I will call them from now on losers because that’s what’s they are. They’re losers.”
NONE DARE CALL THEM GOAT RAPISTS! Except Your Humble Narrator, of course.
Thus did the president apply the same label to murderous terrorists that he had previously bestowed on Rosie O’Donnell, Cher, Rihanna, Mark Cuban, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Maher, Ana Navarro, Chuck Todd, the attorney general of New York, an astrologer in Cleveland, Gwyneth Paltrow, Howard Stern, Jeb Bush, John McCain, Marco Rubio, Karl Rove, Megyn Kelly, the Huffington Post and the New York Daily News — among many others.
Beyond that, did Trump run a focus group to find out terrorists prefer being called “monsters” to “losers”? And does he suppose that taunting them as losers will be an effective counterterrorism strategy? If so, he might form an “L” on his forehead with thumb and forefinger when he invokes terrorist losers.
Presumably Trump didn’t think it through. Likewise, he didn’t mean to offend his hosts in Saudi Arabia by referring to “Islamic terror” rather than “Islamist terror.” He was “exhausted,” an aide explained. Perhaps fatigue also made him turn Saudi Arabia’s King Salman into “King Solomon” — he was off by 3,000 years — and expand the Strait of Hormuz into the “Straits of Hormuz.” Less clear is what made him leave a cheerful message in the guestbook at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem: “so amazing and will never forget!”
Trump, who once scolded President Barack Obama for bowing before a Saudi ruler, executed a similar stoop in Saudi Arabia. Trump, who once criticized Michelle Obama for failing to wear a headscarf in Saudi Arabia, gave a speech there while his bareheaded wife and daughter listened. (Melania Trump struck another blow for women when her husband, ungallantly walking ahead of her on the Tel Aviv tarmac, reached back for her hand; she flicked his away.)
What? She has to let it copulate with her (contractual obligation), but she'll be damned if she's gonna touch it.
Trump does best when he sticks to the script others have written for him, as he did in his well-received speech in Saudi Arabia. It’s when he ad-libs that he gets in trouble, as when he proclaimed recently that peace is “maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years.” Diplomats of the past 70 years must have been losers.
Problem is, Trump has trouble sticking to the script. The White House distributed Trump’s prepared remarks for his meeting with Rivlin, making it possible to identify his ad-libs, a clutter of asides and superlatives. “Amazing.” “Very holy.” “And that’s number one for me.” “There’s no question about that.”
Had the president’s predecessors employed such filler, these immortal words might be etched in marble on the Potomac:
“Four score and seven years ago — that’s a long time ago, very long — our fathers, who spoke about this at great length, did what perhaps has virtually never been done before: brought forth on this continent, a new nation, a very great new nation — there’s no question about that — conceived in liberty — and that is so important! — and dedicated to the amazing proposition — and they felt very strongly about this, I can tell you — that all men are created equal. Number one for me.”
The world, hopefully, will not long remember the gaffes Trump made over there. But it can enjoy a good chuckle.
I hope somebody with some credibility also writes of these things, you ignorant cow.
No comments:
Post a Comment