Why Trump Wars
In the disruptive era known as the Trump administration, a war
has been launched. It cannot be considered anything less than this.
Part of this is the fault of the previous administration. Part of it is
the will of the masses who overwhelmingly elected the president. And a
major part of it is finally having a president who punches back.
Critics
look at the president and insist that he change his tactics, his
strategy, and his methods. Supporters are so shocked by his ability to
stand his ground, they grow breathless watching each day go by.
In only his first month in office it has become a literal blood sport. And I for one couldn’t be more pleased.
It is the president vs. the established media.
It
is a battle as intense and as unrelenting as any president has ever
faced in office. And perhaps for the first time in my life it is one
where the media is both befuddled as well as seething with outrage at
the resistance they face.
It is also one the media might very well be winning.
On
Thursday of this past week I had occasion to be part of two dinners
that evening. The first stop was a gathering of only six people. They
ranged in age, socio-economic mobility, and all were well educated and
highly skilled at what they do. A series of questions was put to
everyone at the table. And to a person the answers given by nearly all
except me were generalized summaries of what I have seen “reported” on
some of the hot button issues of the day. Topic after topic, the answers
were closely aligned to what one might read on the opinion page of the New York Times or Washington Post.
As the conversation delved from the surface of several of the issues to
the deeper facts to establish why their answers took the positions they
did it became readily apparent that they in fact lacked a series of
facts significant in scope to the matters.
My point is not to
nit-pick my dinner companions that night but to rather point out, that
to the degree that CNN, MSNBC, the broadcast networks, and several of
the mainstream papers were able to project Trump, his policies,
decisions, and actions in a certain light. Average news consumers that
do not look much deeper than that reflected those positions.
Earlier
that day I had been asked by Fox News to explain or defend Mr. Trump’s
rationale in only selecting the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Townhall.com
at his joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The broad stroke slant on the narrative of that matter by CNN’s Jim
Acosta specifically was that the President was avoiding CNN and MSNBC
out of “fear” in having to answer “real” journalists asking “tough”
questions. Never mind the fact that Katie Pavlich of Townhall was the
person who got the first question and leveled two fairly direct issues
at both the President and the Prime Minister. And while CNN’s Acosta,
and later Jake Tapper went into seeming editorial meltdown over Trump’s
refusal to “play ball” no one seems to have noticed the previous eight
years when a legitimate news operation like Townhall.com
was disallowed a single question from the Obama White House. That same
operation would regularly also freeze Fox News out of events, and on
many occasions the President would attempt to isolate and marginalize
Fox News in specific and repeated comments from the President himself.
Yet for the totality of his time in office, Fox News never lost the top
spot of the most watched, most accessed 24 hour news source in America.
Much
of the smug elitism of the political left resides in established media.
And why wouldn’t it? When 90-plus percent of members of the majority
media class votes uniformly for one set of ideals and the party of those
ideals are in power, there will be a comfort level with both the
administration and with those who cover it that will often times look
the other way on stories that should be investigated more deeply.
The
press in America should be hostile to every administration, but in
America they are only hostile to those they disagree with
philosophically.
Mr. Trump is not only not of their mindset in
this regard, but he thoroughly has open contempt for the cozy nature
the press has conducted itself with in recent past.
And they have no idea what to do to counter him.
They
plan to sabotage him in open press conferences, but he has
demonstrated—as he did this week—that he is ready to combat them. If one
only watched the network coverage of his pressers this week you might
come away thinking he was flailing at every turn. But if you watched
them unfiltered, you saw his readiness to command the stage, the issue,
and the debate. Additionally the “established” media have also been
relegated to an even smaller role in the day to day press operations.
The administration has masterfully allowed entry and engagement into the
press office by making six “Skype” seats available at many White House
briefings now. This allows a reporter from New Hampshire to San Diego to
now get a question before them, and that further dilutes the influence
of the “bigs."
The president is also leveraging different
tools in this war. He has some 46 million followers on social media. And
he uses it. No one in the press has anywhere near that reach all on
their own, so when or if they decide to print something he finds
disagreeable—he responds. And they are not accustom to being disputed.
Lastly
much like President Reagan, President Trump has a propensity to prefer
talking to the American people. In the last several days he has hosted
events at Boeing in South Carolina, and another in Melbourne, Florida
that are not "official state business" events. Past presidents have held
such events, but the tax-payers have always paid the price. So long as
the speech given addressed some sort of public issue the White House at
the time felt justified in the cost. President Trump is having his
campaign operation pay for these events. Leaving the tax-payer free from
the cost. And he is using such occasions to have a personal chat with
American voters to keep all who are watching on track with what’s on his
agenda.
The press despises the fact that in such
transparency, (media not considered “establishment," social media reach
beyond recognition, and willingness to go directly to the people) they
are being rendered useless, and their editorial is beginning to reflect
the acrimony of a jilted lover, instead of someone doing their actual
job.
Make no mistake, if my dinner party in lower Manhattan was any measure, they are still wielding tremendous influence.
Yet
it will be interesting to see how this plays out, because the one thing
they never counted on is a White House that would punch back!
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