I don’t know about y’all, but I’m old enough to remember when pretty much anyone who was anyone was achingly certain that Donald Trump — a pop culture icon for 30 years, a man who conquered network television, the Manhattan real estate market, and altered skylines throughout the world — was considered to be just a tad smarter than your standard gorilla.
How do you like him now?
Not only has Trump turned his enemies in the national media into hysterical reactionaries, he has them so flustered that while he plays a long game of chess, these partisan morons aren’t even playing checkers. All I see are a bunch of drooling idiots sitting on a dirty floor sucking on the soggy corner of a checkerboard.
Trump has turned the national media into a gang of neurotic floozies, partisan hacks who preach endlessly about “defending democratic norms” while at the same time turning around at every opportunity to drop their trousers in order to violate their own norms.
We all now know that late Tuesday afternoon, CNN and BuzzFeed violated every “norm” ever norm’d pertaining to journalistic ethics. But riddle me this, Oh Mighty Media-Keepers of the Norms, how is it a “norm” to treat the duly elected President of the United States like he is an existential threat to pretty much everything? How is it a “norm” to treat his every tweet as though it just personally lit you on fire? How is it a “norm,” to be so desperate for revenge against your own (incoming) president, you serially-violate your own standards, and while doing so hypocritically accuse others of Not Doing Things The Way They Are Supposed To Be Done?
(The above-paragraph was inspired by Rich Lowry’s excellent Politico piece. Please take a look.)
Things are so bad…
Politico (no stranger to publishing fake news itself) is defending the publishing of fake news.
Columbia Journalism Review is defending the publishing of fake news.
ProPublica is defending the publishing of fake news.
Keep in mind that all of this is happening as the CNN/BuzzFeed story is in full collapse mode.
1. NBC is reporting that CNN’s pathetic rationale for opening this fake news Pandora’s Box is not even true. (BTW: because in the national media everyone’s brother is sleeping with their own sister, NBC owns 25% of BuzzFeed.)
2. Fox News has confirmed NBC’s report.
3. They got the wrong Michael Cohen!
4. NBC News is also reporting that CNN got it 180 degrees wrong; that the dossier was only being used by intelligence officials as an example of “disinformation.”
Maybe the national media should enforce their own norms before they start crybabying over Trump’s supposed violations?
So not only is the story itself a pile of disproven and unsubstantiated lies, the very foundation that supposedly justified CNN announcing to the world that this story was out there, is crumbling into fairy dust.
Just an idea: Maybe the national media should enforce their own norms before they start crybabying over Trump’s supposed violations?
For their part, and deservedly so, Team Trump has declared open war on our fake news media, and not just CNN and BuzzFeed. Other targets include NBC’s Chuck Todd and the Washington Post’s phony fact-checker, Glenn Kessler.
Incoming Press Secretary Sean Spicer and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway are leading this delicious charge, and doing so in full view of a public that despises the corrupt media almost as much as child molesters:
Okay, stop right now. Because I do not want to hear your precious, prissy, prudish, puritanical, pretentious little speech about the Importance of a Free Press.
There is nothing “free press” about CNN, BuzzFeed, NBC News, Politico, or the Washington Post. This is a proven gang of partisan liars and smear merchants who deserve to be treated exactly like the garbage they are. These phony media institutions, along with the rest of the crooked herd, are nothing more than venal leftists hiding behind the imprimatur of The Free Press.
So you’ll pardon me if I fail to summon a damn about your precious delusions of How a Democracy is Supposed to Work. The national media violated those “norms” decades ago.
And while Team Trump reduces the media to impotent hecklers, the real work of dismantling Obama’s legacy, building a wall, lowering taxes, stacking the Supreme Court, and booming this economy will finally get done.
There is no virtue in losing like a gentleman when your country is at stake.
None.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC