Every time you see president Trump at one of his campaign rallies, the people around him are all too busy with their cell phones to pay any attention to him. It makes you wonder what the point is of these rallies. Oh sure, it feeds his ego and serves to reinforce the image of his support. It is also an opportunity for him to harangue the news media.
And the media do not dare not go. They are penned in as prisoners—for protection, we guess. Trump points at them as a prosecutor making his case. The audience roars its approval. There is no judge to call for quiet.
But is there not a small bit of unctuous truth to what Trump says? Every media outlet that accepts paid advertising is guilty of hypocrisy at some level. It has to, to survive. And surprise, surprise, reporters, rewrites, editors and publishers have their own view of the truth. Truth is not an absolute. You have supreme court judges for that!
But this does not give Donald Trump carte blanche to call the media ‘disgusting.’ It makes him the fool and his claque with him.
But Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Donald Trump’s hillbilly press secretary appears proud that she needs Secret Service protection for standing up for Mr. Trump’s (and her) version of the truth.
And is Donald Trump not entitled to a little annoyance with the news media when they question the value of his meetings with Kim Jong Un of North Korea? Frankly, this observer thinks Kim Jong Un did a better job of representing his military handlers than Donald Trump did in representing the American people. Of course, that is opinion—and is not presented as fact.
But how in hell can Trump say one thing for the cameras in Helsinki at his meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia and then two days later tell us he misspoke? The man said what he said. He denied the information given to him by the American security agencies and alibied the Russian president who poisons and imprisons his opposition. So where does the truth begin?
Somebody paid for that ridiculous rally for Trump in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania last week. It was all in aid of the embarrassing republican candidate for senate in Pennsylvania this November’s mid-term election. Maybe Donald Trump should let nature take its course and let the voters decide. They could hardly all be as ignorant as those people with their cell phones at this recent Trump rally.
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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