The reporter for The Sentinel, a Maryland newspaper out of Montgomery County had suddenly claimed center stage after White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had taken on the White House press corps for what she called a “barrage of fake news.” At that point Karem, clearly no Trump fan, delivered this tirade:
“Come on! You're inflaming everybody right here, right now with those words! This administration has done that as well. Why in the name of heavens — any one of us, right, are replaceable — and any one of us, if we don't get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us. You have been elected to serve for four years at least.
There's no option other than that. We're here to ask you questions. You're here to provide the answers and what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at it and say, ‘See, once again, the President's right and everybody else out here is fake media.’ And everybody in this room is only trying to do their job.”
To which Sanders replied:
“I just — I disagree completely. First of all, I think if anything has been inflamed, it's the dishonesty that often takes place by the news media and I think it is outrageous for you to accuse me of inflaming a story when I was simply trying to respond to his question.”
Exactly.
I am what I have come to call a “First Amendment Fundamentalist.” The First Amendment says what it says - and it says it for a reason. Tyranny cannot flower when free speech flows. Yet somewhere along the line Mr. Karem and doubtless others in the White House press corps have come to the belief that, in essence, what the First Amendment really says is “free speech for me, but not for thee.” And that the media’s free speech has one reason and one reason only - to push the liberal media agenda of the moment.
Which is to say the media gets to say whatever it wants in pushing their agenda- and Ms. Sanders or White House press secretary Sean Spicer or whomever better just stand there and take it - and shut up.
Alas and thankfully, free speech is a two-way street. It applies to White House press secretaries and deputy press secretaries as well as to reporters. And Sanders and Spicer have made robust use of their First Amendment right to push - gasp! - the elected President’s agenda. Good for them!
This also applies to presidents - and suffice to say President Trump has not been shy about making use of his own First Amendment rights. Famously, of course, in 21st century style that means what might be called the “right to tweet.”
The President made use of this just this week - yet again. In a kerfuffle that predictably launched the herd thinking that is typical of Washington, the President, clearly sick of the constant, personally insulting tirades from MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, fired back.
Brzezinski had said, among other things, that the President was “mentally ill” and “unfit mentally”, adding that White House aide Kellyanne Conway was “politics porn.” Her partner and partner-in-provocation Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough had said the President was “crazy”, a “schmuck”, a “thug” and a “goon” who had a thing for “pooping his pants.” Poster children for civility in public discourse neither are not.
The President, who famously believes that when attacked, attack back times-ten or a hundred or a thousand, finally did so. In two simple tweets (here and here) he responded to the repeated insults and trolling by saying:
I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..
...to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!
The media world went crazy. I would be the first to say he shouldn’t have done it - among other things it distracts from his agenda. But listening to all the horrified baloney about misogynism and more? Please.
To begin, Mika Brzezinski is - hello gender equality? - a liberal television talk show host. Her late Dad famously served as President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. A conservative Mika is not. Which is fine. In this situation neither here nor there. What does matter though is her decision to repeatedly not criticize the President for his policies but personally. Thus instead of critiquing his health care legislation or views on NATO she - and as mentioned her significant other and Morning Joe partner Joe Scarborough chose and choose to repeatedly go down the road of personal insult.
Mika and Joe, it must be said, are not alone. A short list - say again a short list - of media Trump critics finds the following:
- Morning Joe's Steve Rattner says the President is "loony toons."
- The New York Times says the President is "mentally ill"
- The Washington Post compares the President to Hitler
- The Huffington Post says the President is a "sociopath"
- Scientific American calls the President a "psychopath"
- Columnist David Brooks of the New York Times said the President was "psychologically off the chain."
- Salon says the President is really "Mussolini"
- Last but not least The Washington Post claimed the motivation behind Trump supporters was "racism"
Mind you, these words emanate from journalistic organizations that are known for lecturing the rest of us about the lack of civility in public life.
Is it any wonder that the President and his White House staff, as illustrated by the words of Ms. Huckabee Sanders, feels the press is out to get them? That the real goal is not to report the news but rather to deliberately and willfully bring down the duly elected President of the United States? Is it any wonder Trump supporters stick by their man, assailed as they are as nothing but a bunch of racist rubes. Is it any wonder the president tweets to push his agenda - and get around the liberal media that has its own liberal agenda?
The presidential tweeting has become yet again a source of controversy. So much so that the White House has seen fit to put out a formal statement on the subject. For the record, here’s the statement in its entirety:
“President Trump made more than 160 tweets in June, with over 120 tweets dealing with his policies and information the American people want to hear about.
In June, over 2/3rds of the President tweets concerned advocating for his policies and informing the American people about his Presidency.
Less than a third of the Presidents tweets deal with the Russia investigation or the biased media.
Despite the President’s priorities, the news media seems almost entirely focused on the tweets that involve themselves, not the issues that impact the America people.
Less than 20 of the over than 160 tweets the President made in June had to do with the media’s bias.
It’s obvious where the President’s priorities are, advocating for the American people, while the media is focused on Washington gossip and themselves.”
The point? The tweets that seem to drive the media the craziest are not the overwhelming two-thirds dealing with policy. No, what sets the press off are the small handful that, yes indeed, focus on - the media itself.
What Mr. Karem seems not to understand is that outside the Washington Beltway, not mention outside the precincts of the White House press room the bulk of the American people could care less about White House reporters getting their knickers in a knot over White House staff members using their First Amendment rights to push the presidential agenda. What they do care about is their own life and what the President is doing to make their particular situation - their health care, their job, their safety from terrorists and more - better. And if anything should be a signal to Mr. Karem that vast swaths of the American people have a serious problem with the media it should be the very presence of that signal everywhere in the professional precincts Mr. Karem inhabitants.
That would be the White House. Where the signal is everywhere that Donald J. Trump - not Hillary Clinton - sits in the Oval Office. And sits in that Oval Office precisely because all those “rubes” out there - aka millions of Americans - were sick and tired of being lectured too by a liberal media they simply no longer trusted. Once that is understood? Once Mr. Karem realizes the American people voted for the Trump agenda and not the Karem agenda? Not to mention not the Mika and Morning Joe agenda or the agenda of The Washington Post or The New York Times and all the rest?
Once he digests that the President isn’t the only one unamused at being called “mentally ill” or “crazy” or a “schmuck” “goon” or “thug” or “Hitler”, “Mussolini” a “psychopath” and all the rest? Once he gets that - and understands the White House staff is being applauded out in the countryside for forcefully using their First Amendment rights?
Once that miracle happens, one could reasonably believe that Mr. Karem and his colleagues will have a whole lot easier time doing their job. And their job? That would be to report the news - not push the liberal agenda.
Shocking thought that this may be.
