Someone needs a timeout

Trump’s terrible, horrible time is hurting others

Joseph Weber

Source: Night Cafe

Donnie Trump has been having a lot of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days lately, kids. It’s like he woke up every day for the last couple weeks with gum in his hair (and he likes his hair), missed out on a window seat in the car and got in trouble at school.

Only, it’s a lot bigger than all that – so much so that cranky Donnie has been stamping his feet, waving his little hands and banning newspeople from his house. Mind you, that’s The People’s House, even if Donnie thinks he can wreck it whenever he wants to, so his new bans on CNN, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) and Politico may just amount to an empty tantrum.

We’ll have to see what judges have to say about that – and a lot of judges haven’t been very nice to Donnie lately.

Source: Sky News

The problem for Donnie is that these newspeople have been telling everybody about a lot of no good, very bad things happening to him. He doesn’t like it when they do. He says they “constantly write or report FICTION and LIES” about him.

Some judges, for instance, have been spanking him and these people have told the country about that. One judge refused to let Donnie put his name back on the Kennedy Center after he and an appeals court had ordered Donnie’s name off it. This hurt Donnie’s feelings so much that he threatened to wreck the center just as he did the East Wing of the White House so he could build a big golden dance hall.

And a big group of judges in the Supreme Court stopped Donnie from using the U.S. Postal Service to stop some people from voting. Donnie yelled at the judges about that, calling three of his friends on the court “a shell of their original selves.” Donnie’s worried about voting coming up in November because a lot of his friends could lose unless he can scare a lot of voters away.

Donnie doesn’t like MS NOW, which used to be called MSNBC, because he says it mostly is kind to Democrats, people that Donnie calls “Dumocrats.” These are the people who might take a lot of jobs away from Donnie’s friends in just a few weeks.

But Donnie is also unhappy because of a lot of bad news in the economy. High gas prices have been making drivers very sad and they are mad at Donnie about that, giving him record low approval ratings. CNN, one of the places Donnie is most angry at, called this a “crude awakening.” And a friend of Donnie’s got him mad by raising interest rates, which will make everything more expensive for voters.

Source: William P. Barrett, AI

Some of the newspeople who Donnie doesn’t like have been saying he was fibbing when he said all kinds of things are getting less expensive lately. Most people know that’s not true, but it makes Donnie mad to be told that. He probably thought CNN was nasty when it said his “claim that ‘almost every item’ is getting cheaper comes up against a damning reality.”

Donnie’s fight with people in Iran is not going well, either, which also is making him sad. The Iranians are bombing ships again, so Donnie says he may “annihilate” them. Some newspeople have said Donnie has often said he won the war, but they keep telling people it’s still going on. Politico may have made Donnie especially mad because it has told people that at least one big member of Donnie’s party wants to fire the Secretary of Defense because of the fight with Iran.

But what may be bothering Donnie most about Politico is that it told people that a bad Russian man who is friends with the even badder man who runs Russia rented a private island and paid for fireworks at a party after the wedding of Donnie’s son. Donnie’s son’s wife said it was just a wedding gift, but some people who don’t like Donnie said it raised questions about “pay-to-play schemes and foreign intelligence infiltration” of Donnie’s family.

Donnie didn’t say what was bothering him most right now. Instead, he told people there were “cumulative stories over the last few years.” But he has been mad at newspeople for many years because many of them don’t like things he does, such as pushing brown and Black people out of the country even if that’s illegal and trying to build big monuments that a lot of people don’t want.

Donnie says that there may be other newspeople that he will ban from the White House and some people guess that this could include The New York Times and The Washington Post, which he says are “disgusting.” But the man who runs the Times, A.G. Sulzberger, wrote that lots of presidents have been mean to reporters.

“Presidents of both parties have done their best to pressure the press and discourage reporting they haven’t liked,” he wrote. “John F. Kennedy spied on one of our reporters. Richard Nixon tried to block the publication of the Pentagon Papers. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both used the courts to try to force Times reporters to reveal confidential sources.”

But he said no president has been nastier than Donnie. “No president in modern history has been more hostile than Donald Trump to a press he’s dubbed ‘the enemy of the people,’” Sulzberger wrote. “He accuses reporters of treason, a crime punishable by death. He personally sues news organizations when their coverage displeases him. He directs his administration to use the levers of government power to investigate, subpoena and prosecute journalists for doing their jobs.”

And yet, when he is talking privately, Donnie has been nice. As Sulzberger put it, “… in a reminder of the press’s lasting importance, Mr. Trump, like his predecessors, still reads The Times. He still relies on us, still takes questions from us and still quotes us when convenient. Indeed, during a visit to The Times, he told my colleagues and me that he thinks of us as ‘a great, great American jewel, a world jewel.’”

Still, Donnie has not been a happy boy lately and he’s taking that out on other people, something that most children know is not a good thing. Do you think he should sit in the corner for a while? Might a timeout be a good idea for him? Maybe a really long one?

Trump TV Starts a New Season

Source; Vanity Fair

Donald J. Trump is slated to appear on CNN on Wednesday night for what is being billed as a town hall. This raises a host of journalistic questions that I suspect will persist throughout the campaign. Already, folks are weighing in on the propriety of CNN granting this showcase.

As Kyle Pope of Columbia Journalism Review asks, for instance: “Do you give Donald Trump airtime or ignore him? Fact-check him in real time or let him discredit himself? Pick apart his most noxious ideas or hope they go away?”

So, let me join the parade with a few matters media outlets – and viewers — need to consider. First, of course, is whether the man is newsworthy. That’s an easy one – he’s currently the frontrunner in GOP circles in the race for the presidency and, like it or not, he did occupy that office. By definition, he’s newsworthy and many viewers – perhaps especially those who shun CNN – would want to see him.

This is different, of course, from the 2016 campaign – at least in its early stages. Back then, he had clown appeal and few, probably including many in his inner circle, thought his efforts were anything but a PR stunt. He offered comic relief. Now, he needs to be taken seriously.

The question then becomes: if he is to be taken seriously, how is he best dealt with? He is almost certain to lie, perhaps about the election results and certainly about the various legal problems piling up for him. One technique, of course, would be to call on various pundits who could disembowel him with facts.

Women who have alleged improprieties by Trump. Source: Time

But Trump is so shameless and effective at bluster – a master salesman who at least appears to believe his own pabulum — that he won’t respond the way a normal candidate would. A normal candidate would be set back on his heels by the truth. But he’ll barrel on through, keeping the limelight focused on his untruths as if they were real (likely to the applause of his supporters, who want nothing to do with a normal candidate).

Indeed, the problem raised by CNN allowing disinformation on the air was suggested in a CNBC piece. The author, Alex Sherman, referred to a promise that CNN chief Chris Licht made last year when he took over the outlet, a pledge to avoid putting on anyone who engaged in disinformation.

“The analogy I love to use is some people like rain, some people don’t like rain. We should give space to that. But we will not have someone who comes on and says it’s not raining,” Licht said in an October interview with CNBC.

He was referring to election denier nonsense, in particular, there.

But, as Sherman suggested, Licht appears to be backtracking. “This seems to be a case of Licht bending his own rules,” he wrote. “Clearly, CNN has different standards for Trump than it does spokespeople for Trump that cycle through cable news networks as daily guests.”

Still, CNN does want to treat this appearance in serious journalistic fashion. That will mean fact-checking of some sort, as CNN officials have acknowledged.

“We obviously can’t control what Donald Trump says—that’s up to him,” CNN Political Director David Chalian told Vanity Fair. “What we can do is prod, ask questions, follow up, and try to get as revealing answers as possible.”

That certainly sounds reasonable. The problem, of course, is what is reasonable in dealing with Donald Trump?

The sad fact is that in modern times we’ve never had a president like Trump or a candidate like him, either. In recent memory, extramarital shenanigans – or something as benign as tears — would disqualify a contender. Now, even an indictment (much less two impeachment proceedings) is insufficient. How low have we sunk?

Source: Britain’s Got Talent Wiki

So, let me make a modest proposal. On one of the innumerable TV talent competitions, whenever a judge finds someone unacceptable, he or she hits a button that puts a big red X on the screen. If a majority of the judges hits such buttons, the auditioner is bounced.

What if CNN did something like this with Trump? Each time he lies, a big red X and a loud buzzer could sound. As soon as he hit, say, six red Xs, he’d be escorted off the stage to the tune of the Beatles “Nowhere Man.”

The host would explain the rules in advance – perhaps in an effort to confine Trump to true statements. And after each lie, the host would explain the truth.

The only problem with this approach would likely be that Trump’s appearance would be short and CNN would then need to find a way to fill the airtime. Perhaps the network could then put on a credible candidate, from either party. Almost certainly, that would better serve the public than this town hall is likely to.

Private flaws, public failings — Spitzer and Edwards

It was surreal watching CNN this past week, as former Presidential hopeful John Edwards was hit by a federal indictment in connection with his extramarital affair during the 2008 presidential campaign. The Edwards news was old hat. What was bizarre was watching a genuine expert in the realm, former N.Y. Gov.-turned-pundit, Eliot Spitzer, report on it all.

How rich can it get in the land of pols-turned-quasi-journos? Here was Edwards, a former U.S. Senator looking pathetic but still well-coiffed as he offered regrets but a denial of legal guilt. And there was Spitzer at his anchor desk for his prime-time showcase, “In The Arena,” recounting it all and soberly assessing the prosecutors’ chances. Here was one marital cheat talking to a national audience about the failings of another, while never mentioning his own perfidies, of course.

How can it be that national TV journalism has descended into a hall-of-mirrors world such as this? Where are Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw or Katie Couric when you need them? Even Lou Dobbs – whose former CNN show, with its dubious emphasis on point of view, seems to be Spitzer’s model – would have been better. At least, it would have been free of hypocrisy.

Don’t get me wrong about rehabilitation. I believe in second chances. And people do have a right to make a living, a right even to regain lost dignity. What’s more, Spitzer, unlike Edwards, was never indicted as a result of his secret dalliances. Spitzer in fact had the good sense to resign as governor in 2008, stepping out of that arena with an appropriate mea culpa and sequestering himself for a while as he presumably tried to get his hungers under control and keep his family together. He’s also a smart guy with some real experience that could be valuable – maybe outside of journalism.

But there remains something odd when one serial adulterer who plunged sullied from high public office sits at a gleaming high-tech news and commentary desk and opines about the misdoings of another. A viewer might have half-expected Spitzer to declaim, “well, back when I was stepping out on Silda, here’s how I stayed clear of prosecutors…”

As it was, Spitzer instead interviewed a former prosecutor-turned-journalist, CNN legal analyst and New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin, about the prosecution’s risky case. That gave Spitzer a chance to hint, albeit briefly, that maybe prosecutors were abusing their discretion in pursuing the case (which has to do with the misuse of nearly $1 million in donated funds to conceal the affair). It would not have been out of place for Spitzer to compliment the enforcers who passed on pursuing him, even as he dallied with prostitutes first as New York’s attorney general and then as its governor.

One has to wonder what was going through Toobin’s mind. The guy, an author of much-praised books on the Supreme Court and other legal matters, is a professional journalist, not a pol. One imagines Toobin saying, “Well, Eliot, you’re right. The prosecutors who combed through the wiretaps in your case may have taken an unpopular stance in declining to charge you, but in legal terms …”

Of course, nothing of the kind happened. Instead, it was as if the ex-Gov. was just another journalist, another honest purveyor of the craft bringing truth to the benighted millions. The sad part is that CNN has plenty of legitimate journos – Anderson Cooper sits atop a long list. But for reasons that one suspects have to do with ratings, it chooses to be the vehicle for Spitzer’s return to the limelight.

As for the pathetic l’affaire Edwards, the doings of the former North Carolina Senator, onetime Democratic vice-presidential nominee and two-time Presidential aspirant offer still more lessons for journalists. This aw-shucks pol with the boy-next-door good looks is a bona fide member of quite a club of the ethically challenged. Members — some prosecuted, some not – include former governors, such as Spitzer, Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, James McGreevy of New Jersey and Mark Sanford of South Carolina, as well as former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, former President Bill Clinton, former Israeli President Moshe Katsav and current Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Each member’s tale is sordid in its own way and together they are interestingly nonpartisan. But the common denominator for all these disgraced leaders is the heady pursuit of sex, money or power – their outsize cravings for such things — and the blurring of the lines between right and wrong that can come with that. For reporters, these folks, including Spitzer, are the embodiment of the idea that vigilance is mandatory. Of course, that idea goes for real reporters – the Cronkite and Couric type — not the ersatz cable-host variety.