Another sign of Donald Trump’s insecurities is a survey he sent out to supporters following his rant-n-rave presser Thursday. It was called the “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey.â€
This thoroughly remarkable survey seems intended, as well as to rally the base, to give Donald Trump a much-needed boost in confidence, as the explanation demonstrates with it’s “don’t you agree poor Donald is being bullied” approach:
Media Matters for America caught at least one grammatical error – without which no Trump-related utterance would be complete:
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We can answer emphatically that we do not. We neither “believe” nor “agree.”
The last question asks,
“Do you believe that our Party should spend more time and resources holding the mainstream media accountable?â€
In other words, Trump is asking should the GOP fight for his lies against the mainstream media’s accurate reporting of the things he is saying.
In a way, this is a bit of a no-brainer as this has been Republican policy for the past eight years, and further if you reach back to those heady days of George W. Bush’s manufactured realities, or as old as Fox News if you wish to take it there.
The final step is to give money to Donald Trump to pay for his lies – admittedly an expensive proposition. That’s right, you too can help Donald Trump “fight through the noise” against “the outrageous attacks from the media”:
The rest of us call it news but Trump’s decision to brand everything he doesn’t agree with “fake news” doesn’t leave him much wiggle room, so we have to expect a hefty dose of the absurd from any Trump communication. Just look at his Twitter account. Sad!
Donald Trump is clearly feeling the pressure of the press, and he should, because no president has ever emerged victorious from a contest against the press. Ask Richard Nixon.
This is Trump’s latest effort to delegitimize the press, part of a broader effort to delegitimize all dissent, and again, he has a prior Republican model to build on here.
Obviously, the lack of accountability is not uniquely Trumpean but rather is thoroughly Republican (No wonder Paul Ryan loves him so much. He sees a kindred spirit).
Trump is trying to play the victim again, a picture thoroughly at odds with the “strong man” he claims himself, in the model of his hero Vladimir Putin, to be. Rest assured, this will not be the end of his whining.
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.
