Day 6: White House Briefings Replaced By Fox News
Yesterday, Donald Trump’s agenda via Twitter: libel, the weakening of federalism and making Fox News dangerously close to state-run media. Just a typical day at the office.
There’s this tweet, which likely opens him up to a libel suit from CNN (should they choose to pursue it)…
…and is demonstrably false.
But more concerning was Trump’s threat to send federal forces (National Guard? Army? FBI?) into Chicago if violent crimes do not stop.
Of course, federalism is a tenet of our government. Federalism allows power to be divided among different governmental entities at different levels. National government runs simultaneously with state and local governments as part of the overall system. It’s worked pretty well for over 200 years.
If the federal government starts running all facets of government — and says begone to the Tenth Amendment, among other things — we move substantially closer to an authoritarian government.
You may recall the fears of some people on the far right that Barack Obama was stomping on the Constitution, was going to institute military control, was going to send the feds into cities and would not leave power in January 2017. Turns out that many of those very people are perfectly happy when Trump threatens one or more of those ideals, though.
At first, it wasn’t clear why carnage was put in quotes in Trump’s tweet. After all, the man is not grammatical genius. Additionally, there was also no citation for the statistics he cited, so they appeared to be conjured out of thin air.
But then it all be came oh so clear. About an hour and a half earlier, on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, this graphic appeared:
Hmm, that looks familiar.
And note what word O’Reilly’s guest used in describing what’s happening in Chicago:
Hmm, that sounds familiar.
The President, less than a week into the job, is relentlessly watching Fox News (and disparaging its competitors). He also can’t stop tweeting every unconstitutional and unconscionable thought that comes into his head.
6 days in, 1456 to go
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