Day 648: Apparently not enough death and violence toward innocents for Trump as he continues to stoke flames of hate and division
Donald Trump has tried to inflame the far right wing of the nation for years. He has accused any dissenter — person, organization or the media as a whole — as being anti-American.
In reality, there’s nothing more pro-American than the ability of people or entities to speak out peacefully. Being criticized comes with the job for politicians, especially presidents. Just look at Barack Obama, who was critiqued for wearing a tan suit during a press briefing and his use of mustard on a hamburger, in addition to wacky conspiracy theory after wacky conspiracy theory, many of which were furthered by Trump himself.
There’s a reason the Framers put the protections afforded in the First Amendment first in the Bill of Rights: because the rights of everyday Americans were to be different — superior — than those granted in other nations, including left-behind England. They include the rights to freely exercise speech, press, assembly and religion, without government intrusion.
No matter how much the government disdained or disagreed with what was being said or done, there was little they could do to stop it. The Framers realized that without free expression, a nation truly isn’t free.
Fast forward 200-plus years and Trump is calling members of the media treasonous nearly every day, simply because they cover him in a manner that isn’t pure pro-Trump propaganda.
Trump refers to the media as the enemy of the people, as he did Monday morning.
He doubled down 12 hours later, clarifying that he only meant that the media that he deems fake news to be the enemy.
No one lies more than Trump. For him to accuse others of lying is hypocritical and disingenuous. He’s lied well over 5,000 times since being elected, according to The Washington Post.
Additionally the problem is Trump doesn’t mean “fake news” as the term originally meant: stories that were made up out of thin air, covering events that never happened with falsified quotes from fictional people for publications that don’t exist. Fake news meant stories that were intentionally designed to fool people to feel a certain way by crafting tall tales.
That’s not who Trump is referring to. His past words evince a belief — or pretend belief designed to rile up his supporters— that highly credible, long-standing bastions of the free press are fake news. They are the enemy of the people to Trump and — he hopes — his supporters.
In the last few months alone, he’s called CNN fake news dozens of times, along with NBC, ABC, CBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and many, many more.
This has been going on for years as his administration has been embroiled in embarrassment, fiasco, controversy and scandal.
Basically anyone that isn’t sycophantic to Trump and his ideas — see Fox News, conservative blogs and alt-right websites — is labeled fake news and the enemy of the people by the President of the United States.
One would think that such rhetoric would be tamped down after a deranged man sent homemade pipe bombs to prominent people and organizations that Trump criticizes, including CNN. Or the fact that Trump called for unity hours after an anti-Semite and apparent neo-Nazi stormed a synagogue and killed 11 in part apparently due to Trump’s lies about a caravan of Central American migrants causing national security issues at the southern border.
But no, Trump can’t stop ripping at and dividing the nation, despite the events that happened last week. He can’t stop stomping on the Constitution.
There’s blood on his hands from days ago and yet he’s no rush to stop putting more Americans, including the free press, at risk simply for doing their job.
Just the opposite, actually.
648 days in, 814 to go
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