Let’s face it, there’s more than a little resemblance to the Wizard of Oz, as Trump constructs a cult presidency.
As confirmed by his on-again meeting with the NYT, where discussing his demonstratable conflicts of interest he comes off as King Louis XIV without the culture. The state, it’s he–he is simply not bound by mortal law, seeming to suggest that he is ruling by divine right.
This is unprecedented in this country.
That’s why he cancelled his meeting with The New York Times today. Unlike his ambush of “mainstream” TV “news” personalities yesterday, this wasn’t going to be another closed-door humiliation orgy.
Must read piece at Talkingpointsmemo.com:
Theda Skocpol, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Caroline Tervo describe how “Behind ‘Make America Great,’ the Koch Agenda Returns with a Vengeance.”
And it’s an apocalyptic agenda indeed.
Eric Boehlert at Media Matters anatomizes the bizarrely skewed post-election mea culpa by Public Editor Liz Spayd.
“At every turn, the readers with whom Spayd chooses to engage criticize the purported liberalism of the Times’ coverage. The message the public editor sends is clear: the paper should move to the right to quell reader concerns.
“Yet not a single reader whom Spayd chose to include in her post-campaign analysis expressed any concern about the daily’s Clinton coverage. Nor did she feature any complaints that the paper’s coverage of Trump may have been insufficiently rigorous. Instead, criticism from the left of the paper’s general election coverage was entirely absent.”
Boehlert asks,”Did the newsroom learn the wrong lessons from the 2016 campaign?”
For the sake of American democracy, we can only bloody well hope not.
These are the people–employees of the “mainstream” network TV “news” shows–that got Trump elected, and he nevertheless blasts them because they belatedly started to do a perfunctory amount of actual vetting toward the end of the campaign. They still did the least amount possible to maintain the pretense that they are a legit news service.
As “DaisiesArePretty” writes at DailyKos:
“In spite of the hours and hours and hours of free media time they gave him — a 24/7 trump show … in spite of the hours and hours and hours of bashing Hillary over emails, bashing other Dems over hacked emails, to his advantage, then dropping the “important” email story as soon as trump won — (which Angela Marx talks about in this diary www.dailykos.com/…) … in spite of the short shrift the media gave to every candidate, in both parties, during the primaries … trump — shamelessly normalized by the media talking heads — called them on the carpet today and gave them a royal bashing. . . .”
And they actually stood there and took it. Their response is predictable: even more obsequious coverage of Fearless Leader.
What went on in today’s secret meeting between the Trumpster and a gaggle of already compliant, compromised “mainstream” television “news” executives and personalities?
So Joe Scarborough continues to “advise” Trump, just the way Will helped prep Reagan for the 1980 debates.
Love that liberal media!
Looks like the GOP got away with another election theft:
Indications abound of a “strip and flip” operation.
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman at the Columbus Free Press identify the many red flags.
“These indicators include the realities of pre- and post-election polling; the massive stripping of primarily black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters from computer generated registration rolls mostly maintained by private partisan companies; unverifiable “black box” electronic voting machines and central tabulators, also mostly manufactured and maintained by private corporations, and much more.
“Were this election held in any other country, the US State Department and independent monitors from around the world would denounce it as a fraud, and contemplate international intervention.”
of the toxic nut jobs Trump has hired —
cold, distorted, maniacal.
Really scary, disturbing.
All he wants to do is shovel public subsidy into private investment. Sound familiar? Are the Democrats, once again, going to get played by going along?
“Don’t do it,” Ronald A. Klain counsels in The Washington Post. “It’s a trap. Backing Trump’s plan is a mistake in policy and political judgment they will regret. . . . “
