Donald Trump has both used and abused the media for a long time. However his latest attacks are getting crankier and more disturbing. Recent tweets:
Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a “tenfold” increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal. Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!
With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!
Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!
Trump is even being slammed on Fox News.
Joe Scarborough said Trump was “channeling Chairman Mao and Joseph Stalin by calling the media ‘enemy of the people.'”
He said that Trump’s criticism of the press’ right to free speech is possible the most “disgusting” and “frightening” thing the president has ever said.
“It’s an attack on the media to be sure, but more profoundly, it’s an attack on the First Amendment,” Mark Halperin said.
Willie Geist described Trump’s behavior as “Authoritarianism 101.”
“You delegitimize the press, you delegitimize your opponents, and then you try to destroy them,” Geist said. “He’s saying to people who support him and to the American people, ‘Don’t believe your eyes and your ears when it comes to things that criticize me. Don’t believe what you’re seeing. Fake news! Fake news! Fake news!'”
Trump has a right to challenge news he doesn’t think is accurate.
Also on Fox: Trump and Mattis team up to refute NBC nuke report, blast ‘disgusting’ press
President Trump and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis on Wednesday publicly refuted an NBC News report that claimed the commander-in-chief wanted to drastically increase the U.S. nuclear arsenal, with Trump calling the press “disgusting.”
Trump slammed the NBC report that said he sought a “nearly tenfold increase” in the nuclear arsenal during a summer meeting.
“Frankly, it’s disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write and people should look into it,” Trump told reporters. “I never discussed increasing [the nuclear arsenal]. That is fake news by NBC, which gives a lot of fake news recently.”
Trump added that he only wants “modernization” and “rehabilitation” of the stockpile.
“It’s got to be in tip-top shape,” Trump said. “I know the capability we have, and it is awesome. It is massive.”
Trump continued to slam the press for allegedly making up sources. “There are no sources,” he claimed.
I don’t believe there are no sources, there is no evidence that media make up stories from nothing.
Inaccurate information or deliberate information are possibilities.
Mattis issued a brief statement shortly afterward saying: “Recent reports that the President called for an increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal are absolutely false. This kind of erroneous reporting is irresponsible.”
Perhaps it is erroneous, and if so then it’s irresponsible.
But Trump himself is often erroneous and irresponsible.
And it is irresponsible of Trump to theaten to revoke broadcasting licenses when he doesn’t like the messages they broadcast.
Calling ‘fake news!’ whenever he doesn’t like something that is said is putting whatever credibility Trump might have at risk.
It may reinforce some of his base that information can be supported as true no matter how outlandish and conspiratorial it is (and Trump is known to stoke conspiracies), and dismissed as fake if you don’t like it.
But there is a real risk that an increasing number of people will simply roll their eyes and dismiss Trump when he cries fake.
Pete George
/ October 13, 2017https://twitter.com/rodemmerson/status/918544096947445760
Kitty Catkin
/ October 13, 2017I saw that in this morning’s Herald-brilliant.
Pete George
/ October 13, 2017Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017Goodness, I thought. America in flames, WH burning. Turned to Realclearpolitics. Nothing.
Joe Bloggs
/ October 13, 2017RWNJ Alert. That’s hardly surprising, Alan – when you rely on news sites that are owned by Forbes, what you see will always be tainted to favour conservative causes.
Neutrality is a revenue killer, whereas wearing “two hats” is a money maker. Realclearpolitics displays a veneer of of ideological diversity, which simply makes them a click-bait vendor. Scratch the surface and they’re still a conservative news site that supports the moron-in-chief
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017They present both sides of the issues which makes them interesting and informative rather than Lefty-blinkered like you, Joe.
Joe Bloggs
/ October 13, 2017That’s ironic coming from you Al, our resident righty-blinkered road-warrior for trumpism 🙂
As farcical as all this stuff is, it’s also a tragedy, and because he holds the office he holds, it is a tragedy not just for the people in his life but for the rest of the world.
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017Absolutely Joe. Shocking for the US where business optimism and job creation is peaking. Shocking for the world where the US is finally getting on top of some of the utter disasters Obama created:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/jim-mattis-defends-response-to-ambush-in-niger-that-killed-4-us-troops/article/2176909
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017and http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/354983-under-trump-the-islamic-state-is-as-good-as-dead
Joe Bloggs
/ October 13, 2017“job creation is peaking” – fake fact.
For one, the US lost 33,000 jobs in September – far worse than the 80,000 new jobs most US economists had expected would be created. For another the pace of job growth since last November, averaging 172,000 new jobs a month, is still lower than in 2016. For a third, August 2017 represented the 83rd successive month of month-to-month job gains in America… 73 of those months were under Obama’s administration.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/sep/20/donald-trump/how-strong-job-growth-been-trumps-watch/
The US economy has been stuck in a low gear with 2% growth since the expansion kicked in. That hasn’t changed under trump. Gross domestic product grew at a 1.4% annual pace in the first quarter, and 3% for the second quarter. Average the two and you get 2.2% for the first half. Exactly the same growth rate achieved in Obama’s final four years.
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017I know you’ll hate this, Joe, but suck it in like a good Lefty:
US Unemployment Rate Lowest in Over 16 Years
US unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 4.2 percent in September 2017 from 4.4 percent in the previous month and below market consensus of 4.4 percent. It was the lowest jobless rate since February 2001, as the number of unemployed persons declined by 331 thousand to 6.8 million. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate rose by 0.2 percentage points to 63.1 percent, its highest level since March 2014.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate
Fight4NZ
/ October 13, 2017That doesnt actually contradict what Joe said.
When it comes to missing the point, still the best
George
/ October 13, 2017Same anti Trump rhetoric.
Isn’t it about time the fake media actually reported the news instead of their bias and bigoted views
Patzcuaro
/ October 13, 2017https://twitter.com/rodemmerson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Patzcuaro
/ October 13, 2017David
/ October 13, 2017It’s now reached the point that the media are losing all credibility, it was a daft story on any level given the US have enough nukes to destroy earth many times over already.
Joe Bloggs
/ October 13, 2017which is why trump’s moronic demand for a nuclear stock-pile of 32,000 warheads was bound to elicit a respose like Tillerson’s.
Joe Bloggs
/ October 13, 2017Five years since Benghazi, the RWNJs still claim that it was bigger than Watergate.
MOTUS has written more than 60 tweets about Benghazi, but last week, four American soldiers were ambushed and killed in Niger, and two more left wounded. No American helicopters came to their rescue, and Congress has never authorized the mission in Niger (something that’s required by the Constitution).
A week later, MOTUS still hasn’t sent one tweet or released any official statement about the death of the four Americans on his watch.
The terror attack in Niger is exactly the sort of event the WH would normally use to score political points. But even though MOTUS sent Pence to Indiana to showboat over the flag at an NFL game on Sunday, he couldn’t be bothered to head to Dover Air Force Base to greet the flag-draped coffin of one of the soldiers he claims to honour. Instead he played golf.
The response to the ambush in Niger makes it clear that Benghazi was never about embassy security, just as the revelation that Javanka used personal emails while in the White House showed that the conservative outrage over Hillary Clinton’s emails was never about secure government communications.
the trump-loving conservative media has buryied the reality that these soldiers’ commanding officers have made statements — but their commander-in-chief hasn’tt.
It’s all a political narrative and right-leaning media mythmaking in action.
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/jim-mattis-defends-response-to-ambush-in-niger-that-killed-4-us-troops/article/2176909
Joe Bloggs
/ October 13, 2017and that says a mouthful doesn’t it: Jim Mattis defends MOTUS while MOTUS says nothing about 4 special force Army Rangers killed while on an unauthorised mission on his watch. More political narratives and right-leaning media mythmaking in action.
So what was Colonel Mustard doing when those bodies came back to Dover air force base? Not honouring the dead but playing golf with Lindsay Graham.
And in the week since? Stony silence from the Oval Office. Stony silence about the 6 American dead and wounded, or the 12 Nigerian soldiers that were killed or wounded alongside them, or the ISIS offshoot that attacked them. Not a single tweet. Plenty on NFL players kneeling to protest police brutality and racial inequality, but not a word on trump’s own Benghazi
And here’s more baffling word-salad from Mattis:
Mattis is Defence Secretary for a good reason. MOTUS needs all the defence he can get.
Meanwhile it was the French forces stationed in Burkina Faso who had to bail the Americans out.
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017Unlike your every frothing contribution, that article was quite balanced and ended:
Analysts are awaiting the political fallout of Wednesday’s ambush with some speculating it may spark a reversal of the U.S. stance on a new regional force – known as the G5 Sahel – which France is pushing but which Washington is cool on.
Others however like Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, a former top United Nations official in West Africa and Somalia, recall with concern the American pullout following the “Black Hawk Down” incident. Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed when Somali militia shot down two helicopters in Mogadishu.
“In Somalia, they over-reacted and withdrew their troops … My worry is that after this attack they will also over-react. Trump might just say ‘Why should we die for this?’ I hope they don‘t.”
Joe Bloggs
/ October 13, 2017Look! Squirrel!
Nothing you’ve said addresses the fact that MOTUS has been stone cold silent about Niger. Nor explains why he chose to play golf instead of honouring his own dead.
But that’s consistent with your political narrative and right-leaning mythmaking, so no surprises really.
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017Another comprehension fail, Joe. The quotation I cited shows exactly why Trump should not rush to tweet about the incident. And he hasn’t. Of course if he had you would be complaining about that instead. LOL.
sorethumb
/ October 13, 2017YOU started this thread calling Alan Wilkinson a RWNJ.
artcroft
/ October 13, 2017Excellent point.
Fight4NZ
/ October 13, 2017“Another comprehension fail. That is meant to be the title of your comment? I mean just looking at the content. I mean you can’t be actually trying to suggest that managing to not tweet is an appropriate and sufficient response to the return of 4 dead soldiers?
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 14, 2017Dunno, F4. How would you scale it relative to the 2,500 US military deaths under Obama? Maybe shutting up and working out how not to have any more is a pretty good option.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/some-2-500-americans-have-died-in-afghanistan-and-iraq-under-obama-20160530
traveller
/ October 13, 2017A brief history of actual fake news set out below .
None are contemporaneous with Trumpism. They are very interesting mind…but it would seem to me that the apparent rampant nature of fake news is fake in itself. Trump loves ( massively 😏) to take leftist memes like “fake news” and attempt to turn them around. Lacking political acumen he completely overhyped them. There is no more perfect example than his now obsession to brand any and all news he views as slanted and negative as simple “fake” news. He’s overegged the custard do much nobody hears him any more.
Excerpt: “The “fake news” freakout: “The story about a professor creating an authoritative list of “fake news” websites, as widely reported across the mainstream media, was itself a fake news story. The creator of the list was a madcap left-wing activist who compiled it on a whim, not through any sort of rigorously-vetted academic process. When the list of fake news sites came under sustained criticism, it was removed from the Internet, long after generating a raft of stories on top news websites and TV shows………as Brian Feldman at New York Magazine points out, the much-hyped factoid about excessive “engagement” with fake election news stories is more like anecdotal evidence than hard data, overstates the actual readership of the fake stories, understates the reach of traditional news sources, and mines a great deal of alarm out of Facebook’s tendency to give opaque answers to questions about its algorithms.”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/11/22/12-fake-news-stories-from-the-mainstream-media/
traveller
/ October 13, 2017The linked story is quite good for those who are biased against breitbart. For all their reputation they do have some good writers and stories.
They talk about Dan Rather, Sabrina Erdely and of course Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair!! What amazed me is extent of the complication of the scams perpetrated by certain reporters and the fact that seasoned, experienced papermen never found them out sooner.
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017For those who like an intelligent analysis of US politics:
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 13, 2017Curious that the sub-editor’s summary paragraph above reflects his/her Lefty wishful thinking rather than anything at all in the article as written!
Mefrostate
/ October 13, 2017Bulk of the article is talking about the ways democrats can combat Trump’s race-baiting. So the summary seems bang-on.
Alan Wilkinson
/ October 14, 2017Actually it is giving the reasons they don’t, can’t and won’t.
sorethumb
/ October 13, 2017Fake News RNZ
Spoonley
And, I would point your listeners to Jody vances Hill Billy Elergy or Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land. Because what they have documented is how rust-belt or red state Americans have become more and more concerned about what some people call the line jumpers. Or the que jumpers. The people who come in from overseas the refugees or perhaps for afirmative action for Afro Americans or women. Who are jumping into the queue ahead of them and getting to the American dream faster than they are. And so they are feeling quite left out, and I think any society which is facing quite significant immigration faces that possibility. Part of the community either for cultural or economic reasons might think that people who are coming in are taking something from them. They’re not adding something to the country they are taking something away.
Ryan
It doesn’t have to be accurate. It just has to be strongly felt.
Spoonley
No. And what is interesting (it occurs in this country) when you look at the number of people who
migrate to a country and you ask people how many are have migrated, almost inevitably the estimations are much higher much higher.
So in the UK at the moment people will over estimate overestimate the Muslim population by 15 times. So it’s a perception.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018617301/the-changing-face-of-new-zealand
Britons overstate the proportion of Muslims in their country by a factor of four, according to a new survey by Ipsos Mori that reveals public understanding of the numbers behind the daily news in 14 countries.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/oct/29/todays-key-fact-you-are-probably-wrong-about-almost-everything
sorethumb
/ October 13, 2017http://www.cafepress.com/mf/67255922/celebrate-diversity-gun-womens_tshirt?productId=672302095
artcroft
/ October 13, 2017Trump is a moron. Its been clear since the day he proposed a wall that Mexico would pay for. Time has only confirmed him as a liar (where’s the wall?, Where’s repeal and replace?) and a fool (read his twitter feed). He’s America’s worst Pres by some distance and he’s only been in the job a little over six months.