Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:04 pm
Donald Trump has really pushed the longstanding Republican attack on the mainstream media as being somehow “liberal” in its outlook, despite a profound conservative bias. Now he is tweeting that,
“It is being reported by virtually everyone, and is a fact, that the media pile on against me is the worst in American political history!”
By virtually everyone. Who “everyone” is remains a mystery. We’re supposed to take his word for it. The word of a man who lies nine out of every time he opens his mouth.
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As for the rest of it, “the worst in American political history,” that’s making a huge claim without any evidence. In the early days of the Republic there were some pretty nasty things said even about modern-day icons like Jefferson, and that continues through our history, and includes Abraham Lincoln. For much less cause.
FoxSports writer Pete Blackburn had a ready response:
.@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/TC7ANXjvmi
— Pete Blackburn (@PeteBlackburn) August 23, 2016
Actually, if you do a search online you will find that perhaps “most” right wing sites support the idea of some sort of media conspiracy against Trump. Keep in mind that the real problem is that the mainstream media is reporting what Trump says, and that somehow seems to be a bias against him.
We’ll scratch our heads over that one for a bit.
Actually, during the primaries, Trump got over $2 billion in free advertising from the mainstream media he is now lambasting.
Conor Friedersdorft at The Atlantic looked at claims of media bias and concluded, “The negative press the Republican nominee is receiving is mostly his own fault.”
Friedersdorft calls Trump’s media strategy “deliberate, mendacious gamesmanship” which “puts journalists in a very tricky position.”
“If they merely report what Trump literally says, they’re accused of hyper-literalism. If they report what he really means, judgment and interpretation are required.”
His conclusion, and it is difficult to find fault with it, is that “He isn’t a victim of bias, but of his own behavior.”
Trump is like a child who thinks any attention, even negative attention, is better than no attention. He can make a fuss out of the smallest thing and don’t think it would be any better if the media responded by ignoring him entirely. Then we’d really see sparks fly.
There is no evidence that this tweet, like any other, has any real basis in fact. This is just Donald being the child he is, weaving conspiracies out of thin air and making it all about him. Nobody does it better, because nobody is as big a baby as Donald Trump.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
