Despite presenting an opportunity for sobriety and excellence, the election of President Donald Trump has been an unmitigated disaster for the political media, which have never reckoned with their role in Trump's elevation and eventual selection, and which have subsequently treated his presidency as a rolling opportunity for high-octane drama, smug self-aggrandizement, and habitual sloth.
For a neat illustration of how farcical things have become, take a look at the Washington Post.'s most recent "Fact check," which helpfully informs its readers that the claimed "One thousand burgers" President Trump bought for the Clemson football team were not "Piled up a mile high" because, "At two inches each, a thousand burgers would not reach one mile high."
Early in Donald Trump's tenure, the Internet was thrown into a flat panic by a host of stories warning that President Trump was marking Loyalty Day.
Similar panics have been started by the news that Trump was bombing Syria without explicit congressional authorization; that he was relying on executive orders to achieve some of what he could not persuade Congress to acquiesce to; that he was detaining illegal immigrants at the border and repelling those who became violent; that he reserved the right to use drones anywhere around the world; that he was amending federal websites to reflect his priorities; and that he liked to play a lot of golf.
In early 2018, the White House held a press conference at which President Trump's doctor, a U.S. Navy rear admiral, delivered a report on the president's health and, in so doing, unleashed the most extraordinarily unethical frenzy in recent memory.
At the press conference itself, ABC's Cecilia Vega insisted that, despite passing the same test that is used at Walter Reed, Trump might have "Early onset Alzheimer's" and "Dementia-like symptoms," while her colleagues threw out maladies from which they thought the patient might be suffering and cited "The doctors and clinicians all across the country" who had diagnosed Trump without examining him.
On CNN, Sanjay Gupta explained that, whatever the doctor said, "The numbers" proved that Trump had "Heart disease." The Washington Post.'s Jennifer Rubin insisted on Twitter that "Trump got a cognitive test not a psychiatric exam," which, she said, "Does not rule out most of what's in DSM." Rubin's speculation was swiftly echoed across the media, which spent the next week inviting experts to take guesses as to what might be wrong with the president.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/02/11/bad-press/
For a neat illustration of how farcical things have become, take a look at the Washington Post.'s most recent "Fact check," which helpfully informs its readers that the claimed "One thousand burgers" President Trump bought for the Clemson football team were not "Piled up a mile high" because, "At two inches each, a thousand burgers would not reach one mile high."
Early in Donald Trump's tenure, the Internet was thrown into a flat panic by a host of stories warning that President Trump was marking Loyalty Day.
Similar panics have been started by the news that Trump was bombing Syria without explicit congressional authorization; that he was relying on executive orders to achieve some of what he could not persuade Congress to acquiesce to; that he was detaining illegal immigrants at the border and repelling those who became violent; that he reserved the right to use drones anywhere around the world; that he was amending federal websites to reflect his priorities; and that he liked to play a lot of golf.
In early 2018, the White House held a press conference at which President Trump's doctor, a U.S. Navy rear admiral, delivered a report on the president's health and, in so doing, unleashed the most extraordinarily unethical frenzy in recent memory.
At the press conference itself, ABC's Cecilia Vega insisted that, despite passing the same test that is used at Walter Reed, Trump might have "Early onset Alzheimer's" and "Dementia-like symptoms," while her colleagues threw out maladies from which they thought the patient might be suffering and cited "The doctors and clinicians all across the country" who had diagnosed Trump without examining him.
On CNN, Sanjay Gupta explained that, whatever the doctor said, "The numbers" proved that Trump had "Heart disease." The Washington Post.'s Jennifer Rubin insisted on Twitter that "Trump got a cognitive test not a psychiatric exam," which, she said, "Does not rule out most of what's in DSM." Rubin's speculation was swiftly echoed across the media, which spent the next week inviting experts to take guesses as to what might be wrong with the president.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/02/11/bad-press/
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