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COMMENTS:
* The morons who think that Trump would make a good president don't want to read or watch journalism. Reality is against them. They look for right wing propaganda that panders to their prejudices. They listen to people who pretend to hate the same people they hate. That's why, no matter how many times it is proven wrong, these idiotic sheep will not hear how wrong supply side economics are, or how true climate change is, or how crazy the birthers among them are. If you tell them what they want to hear, they don't care if it is a lie. That's why they like Trump. He tells simple, easy to fit on a bumper sticker lies that show that he hates the same people they hate.
* You cannot have freedom without a free press, this is simply reality it is why Putin controls the media there and it is why China will not allow a free internet. The Post should be congratulated for being banned by the Donald-it is sort of like winning a Pulitzer except one that really counts-the question then is why are other papers not on his enemies list-haven't they been doing enough to expose this bigoted charlatan. It reminds me of another Post highpoint-Watergate, when post reporters brought down a corrupt president-but that was just a piddling burglary the stakes are much higher now.
* Yeah, the mainstream media is seriously biased about truth. How dare they promote truthfulness, when untruthful people seem just as needy, and hungry for approval. I mean, that's a Constitutional freedom, isn't it? The right to be untruthful?
* The mainstream media started off trying to make this the usual horse race. Trump himself chose not to allow it this time. So here we are, where truth is excoriated as "political correctness" and he mouths obscenities at rallies. It is not surprising that he sold naked pictures of his wife, on his airplane, and disgusted the churchgoers with enough courage to actually BE disgusted. It is also no surprise that his supporters rally behind him in any case. That is how they have been trained. The man is one giant Achilles' heel. The intelligentsia know it. They just have to work up the nerve to send him packing, and ignore the wails of those they've trained to like demagogues such as he.
* The Trumpster has joined a long list of Republican presidential wannabes who feel that members of the news media should act as though they are working for the candidates' public relations departments, only asking them the questions that they WANT to be asked and reporting only those stories that will improve said candidate's public image.
* Trump is a mentally ill fascist. Almost every policy that he has suggested (from Muslim ban to Japan getting their own nukes to "renegotiating" our national debt) will only harm our economy, security and lower our standing on the world stage. Nothing would make the Russians as well as the terrorists happier than seeing Trump become our president.
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Trump demonizes the media, again
By Kathleen Parker, June 14, 2016
From Shanghai to Paris to Moscow, the world has been watching to see how the U.S. election is affected by the latest terrorist bloodbath on our soil, this time in the shadow of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.
Newspapers in those cities and in many others focused attention on the murder of 49 revelers in a gay nightclub in Orlando and what might be expected from either a President Donald Trump or a President Hillary Clinton. It escaped no one that the latest horror would become a factor in the campaign. Nothing, not even the sorrows of the bereaved, takes a back seat to political opportunity.
While Clinton spoke against anti-Muslim rhetoric, Trump leapt into the darkness with all four feet, snarling at President Obama’s lack of passion in addressing the Orlando slaughter and condemning him for refusing to use the words “radical Islamic terrorism” in identifying the enemy.
These charges are familiar enough, but this time Trump went a step further, suggesting that Obama resign from office and, conspiratorially, that there’s more going on than we know. Defaulting to his customary template, Trump shifted responsibility for these thoughts to “people.”
“Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind,” Trump said Monday on Fox News.
“And the something else in mind — you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”
And who are these people who can’t believe “it”? Trump’s Twitter followers? The tiny voices in his head? For certain, they’re not the Post journalists whom Trump now has barred from his campaign events.
Why? Because The Post accurately reported Trump’s words, noting the obvious implication that the president of the United States was somehow in league with the terrorists. Maybe it’s only the “people” thinking this, but Trump’s modus operandi is well-known by now. His book, tedious even to Dick and Jane, is wide-open.
In a normal world, Trump would be booed off the stage. Instead, he is applauded (by some) for adding The Post to his list of journalistic organs denied access to his campaign.
The applause is disheartening, and is evidence that newspapers are little understood or appreciated. This is owing in part to a few notorious fabricators, who were duly punished, as well as a vast array of alternative news sources. But mostly to blame for the demonization of the media broadly are faux news media outlets, Republicans and their cohorts.
For decades now, conservative news sources, many of which are aggregators dependent upon the mainstream media for their bread and butter, have joined radio hosts in blasting traditional news sources. Kill the messenger is their operating principle. Republicans who benefit from this portrayal of the media tender their silence in errant gratitude.
The fact is, Trump hasn’t needed any help in exposing his prevarications, exaggerations and just plain awful behavior. His words and deeds speak for themselves. Thus, the idea that there’s some sort of anti-Trump cabal in the Post newsroom is nonsense. And picking a side between a bombastic fabulist such as Trump and one of the most respected editors in the country, Martin Baron, shouldn’t cut any fresh furrows in anyone’s brow.
That is, not if one values the First Amendment, because you can be sure that Trump does not.
Already, he has said he wants to “open up” libel laws so that people like him can more easily sue newspapers. This is not only unlikely to happen but would prove otherwise problematic for Trump. Among other criteria, libel law requires evidence of defamation of character, the implicit presumption of which would seem to inoculate the accused in Trump’s case.
More troubling in the long term is Trump’s apparent assumption that he can block a free press — much as tyrants, potentates and dictators throughout history have done. Undoubtedly, a state news agency would suit him fine — all the news Good Citizens are fit to read.
Our allies and enemies, meanwhile, will have noted that a possible President Trump, who used the deaths of innocents to essentially indict Obama of colluding with terrorists, would do all in his power to undermine the oldest democracy in the world.
It is hard to sell freedom when at least a sizable portion of the country promoting it seems no longer to understand what it means.
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