Mr. President, keep those daily White House briefings coming!
The longer the better, take every question from every idiot so-called reporter out there. As the Godfather used to say, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
You know you’re winning when, for the first time in television history, the networks are threatening to pull the plug on the one show that’s delivering them their highest ratings – in the case of CNN, their only ratings.
A month ago, the nattering nabobs of negativism were griping that there were no daily press briefings at the White House. Now they’re outraged that Trump is giving them so many briefings.
But this is the way it’s been since November 2016. Whatever Trump does, the alt-left media is against, even if they used to be in favor of it. Think, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Think, energy independence for the U.S., or full employment.
When Trump banned air travel from China in January, he was denounced as a racist and a xenophobe. Now they attack him for not doing it sooner — “70 days of denial, delays and dysfunction,” as The Washington Post put it.
Here was a question from one of the weekend briefings, from a male reporter:
“So why even have a few businesses open? Why don’t they shut down everything? Grocery stores are open, fast food places — why even take a little chance? Just shut all of it down temporarily.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket, stop 330 million people from buying food! Why didn’t we think of this before? You thought the great toilet paper panic of March was bad – let’s shut down the supermarkets for the duration of … whatever.
And while we’re at it, why not close the hospitals too — do you how many people with the virus they have in those places? And police stations, firehouses, gas stations — let’s padlock power plants too, in addition to all the gun ranges and the golf courses.
“We’ll answer that question later,” Trump said, before quickly moving on. He didn’t need to say anything more.
As amusing as this reality TV show is, it’s also appalling to watch, in real time every afternoon, just how low journalism has sunk. This precipitous decline of the Fourth Estate has been going on for quite some time now, for a variety of reasons.
In 2016, Barack Obama’s former bus driver, a failed short-story writer named Ben Rhodes, described to The New York Times how easy it had become to manipulate the White House press corps.
“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. They literally know nothing.”
Rhodes was being generous. The old news-biz farm system — work your way up from small or medium-market newspapers or TV stations to major markets to networks — is utterly defunct.
The only farm system now is being a hack Democrat operative on Capitol Hill. Tim Russert and Comrade Chris Matthews were the originals and now you have, well, everybody, from George Stephanopoulos to Jake Tapper to Chuck Todd to Jim Sciutto to Valerie Jarrett’s daughter, etc. etc. etc. Many are second-generation Democrat toadies — Chris Wallace, John Harwood, Chris Cuomo, John Dickerson, Willie Geist.
Seldom is heard a discouraging word — about any Democrat, that is.
At the White House every afternoon, they’re not there to glean information to share with their audiences. Their only goal, every afternoon, is to sneeringly ask the President an insulting, insolent question that will “go viral.” Tweeter — that’s all they care about. They all dream of becoming hashtag heroes.
How many of their stories begin with “In a tweet that went viral …” It’s all they care about.
That, and selling books about how courageous they are. Which was why Jonathan Karl of ABC “News” Monday brought with him a Chinese reporter who worked for a Hong Kong outfit with deep ties to the same Chinese government that brought us COVID-19. Trump called them out on it, of course.
He toys with them, like the Harlem Globetrotters with the Washington Generals. He dribbles behind his back and bounces the ball off their heads. No wonder the left-wing hacks want to pull the plug on these daily shows.
It doesn’t matter if their questions make no sense, like the one from the reporter for National Panhandler Radio about how an unnamed White House aide may have said “kung flu.” Trump asked for a name. She had not a clue.
Ditto the other day with the question about an inspector general criticizing the administration’s delivery of hospital supplies. Again, he asked for the name. Again, the reporter had not a clue.
To a battle of wits they come unarmed, as Billy Bulger used to say of Eddie Markey.
CBS News last week ran some B-roll from an Italian hospital and claimed it was New York. They followed that fake news Monday by posting a tweet about an overworked ER nurse who wasn’t, a nurse, that is. Last fall ABC ran video of good old boys shooting off a lot of tracer rounds at a Kentucky gun range, claiming it was Turkish genocide of innocent Syrians, the point being, it was Trump’s fault, whatever it was.
Like Harry Truman before him, Donald Trump doesn’t give ’em hell. He just tells ’em the truth, and they think it’s hell.