 You may have noticed that our President is at war with what he calls Fake News. He claims, and it is patently obvious, that most of the mainstream press/media has been attacking him as opposed to reporting on him. As reported in the Chicago Tribune, a Harvard study found that in Trump's first 100 days in office, the tone of the news coverage of the president has been 80 percent negative to 20 percent positive. CNN and NBC were 93 percent negative in their Trump stories, and CBS was a 91 to 9 ratio. And the pro-Trump Fox News? That network was 52 percent negative to 48 percent positive. In Phoenix, Trump did rant about the way the press reports, repeating parts of his Charlottesville reaction that was roundly criticized. When he said he thought the racism and violence was 'coming from both sides' you would think he declared war on black people! The leftists in the media found something they could pounce on, and though it was obviously a true statement, they portray it as Trump denying that white racism exists, and that he was approving of white supremicists and neo nazis. So he went to Phoenix to reach out directly to his supporters and anyone who has issues with getting their news from the mainstream media. "You (pointing to the audience in Phoenix) always understood what Washington, D.C. did not. Our movement is a movement built on love. It's love for fellow citizens. It's love for struggling Americans who've been left behind, and love for every American child who deserves a chance to have all of their dreams come true." "From the inner cities to the rural outposts, from the Sun Belt to the Rust Belt, from east to west and north to south, our movement is built on the conviction that every American from every background is entitled to a government that puts their needs first." Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper (an Obama appointee) called the speech in Phoenix, “downright scary and disturbing." "What happened in Charlottesville strikes at the core of American...Racism is evil -- and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans...We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.We believe that every American has the right to live with dignity. Respect for America demands respect for all of its people. Loyalty to our nation requires loyalty to each other." Don Lemon at CNN had a hissy fit: “His speech was without thought. It was without reason. It was devoid of facts. It was devoid of wisdom. There was no gravitas. There was no sanity there. He was like a child blaming a sibling on something else." "This evening, joined together with friends, we reaffirm our shared customs, traditions and values. We love our country. We celebrate our troops. We embrace our freedom. We respect our flag. We are proud of our history. We cherish our Constitution, including, by the way, the Second Amendment. We fully protect religious liberty. We believe in law and order. And we support the incredible men and of law enforcement. And we pledge our allegiance to one nation under God." ABC's Cecilia Vega, who was at the rally, said that "this was incitement, plain and simple." CNN's Ana Navarro said "Trump must have dementia.” "We all share the same home, the same dreams and the same hopes for a better future. A wound inflicted upon one member of our community is a wound inflicted upon us all...talking about hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America. What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives. No citizen should ever fear for their safety, security in our society, and no child should ever be afraid to go outside and play or be with their parents and have a good time." “This was a hateful, derisive speech,” blasted MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. The Hill noted. “It was a frightening speech.” "And we will work together so that every citizen is free to follow their dreams and their hearts and to express the love and joy in their souls...They’re trying to take away our history and our heritage,” Trump says, adding that “the only people giving a platform to these hate groups are the media and fake news.” He is talking about the way the press romanticizes leftists who want to tear down anything associated with the defeated confederacy, with slavery that was abolished over 150 years ago. About the media that constantly derides the traditional family, the electoral college, and the second ammendment, that hammers our police and service members as militarists and bigots. He is pointing out how the press has adopted the angry leftist 'white privilege' narrative as 'accepted science' just as they have done with global warming. He is confronting the whole notion that the press has forgotten to do its due diligence, and simply acquiesced to political correctness. And as usual, Trump is right. David French of the National Review noted that many of the Antifa and BLM leaders are known communist and black separatist radicals, many with long histories of political activism, violence and even criminal enterprise, but, "You’d never know this from coverage by mainstream media. The networks consistently elevate Black Lives Matter spokespeople without even hinting at their radical views — allowing them to draw adherents by the millions and granting them one of our culture’s largest megaphones." Despite all the harsh news treatment, Trump has not lost his base and according to some surveys, may even be attracting new supporters, like many middle-Americans who are increasingly frustrated by how the ever-present media is hijacking the nation's future by promoting violence, mayhem, and inflammatory rhetoric. They are increasingly angry that the MSM uses their forum to promote their own 'social justice' agenda while directing attention away from critical issues like worldwide terror, healthcare, tax, infrastructure and immigration reform.  Each week since the Inauguration of Donald Trump, there is an account of some professor, military analyst, politician, news or media commentator or even foreign correspondents or ambassadors who pontificates or speculates about Trump's qualifications or psychological makeup to be the Commander-In-Chief of the most powerful military on the planet. But seldom did anyone question Obama, even when he was dismantling the infrastructure of our great military leadership. We are currently seeing some vary suspicious incidents of military dysfunction ( i.e., four destroyers rammed at sea in the past six weeks) and no one is questioning whether Obama's 'restructuring' has had anything to do with it. But you cannot ignore the deep cuts Obama made in command leadership that may well be coming back to haunt us. Commanding Army/Marine Admirals fired by Obama:
Where are those that claim to be huge supporters of our military? Where is John McCain? It seems many of our pseudo patriots are preoccupied by political gamesmanship, and determined to prove they were right about Trump while ignoring the anguish of the families of many patriotic service men and women who have lost their lives in seemingly stupid 'accidents'. Some of the people forced out of service probably deserved some form of discipline. But the law of averages suggests that this is not just an aberration....and since the fired officers were sworn to silence, how will anyone ever know just what happened? I suggest the best way to get to the bottom of this recent rash of military accidents and mistakes and also uncover a boatload of other discrepancies in recent combat incidents ( i.e., Benghazi) would be for President Trump to pardon each and everyone of those military leaders Obama had purged. You know they were forced to sign termination agreements to protect their retirement plans. Let them come forward to explain their side of the story. I suspect we would uncover another massive coverup of political intrigue involving the radical left trying to undermine American military supremacy! There is a huge hole in the side of the USS McCain, but there is a much larger whole in the story of how the leftist Obama machine undermined our nations security.  I have written about my frustration with the direction of our hyper sensitive politically correct culture; the snowflake students seeking sanctuary on campus because someone's speech 'upset' them; the mischaracterization of caucasian police, politicians, and people like me as 'racist, xenophobic bigots' and the attempt to redefine and undermine the basic tenets of our constitutional foundations. Then I saw this letter circulating online and thought, wow, I can relate to this! "My property manager said he had a new candidate for my recently vacated rental home. It is a modest 3 bedroom, one story house that happens to be near the State college, so I can get a decent rental fee that almost covers my mortgage. I have had three students in there for the past three years but they have all graduated and moved on. So my property manager contacted me when this new prospect submitted an application. He said he had the application in hand, that it was very complete and that based on the normal protocols, this guy and his sister would qualify. They intend to make it their main residence and are willing to sign a two year lease agreement. I said, so why are you calling me? He texted me a picture of the guy. I know if I reacted normally, I will be in jeopardy of violating renter discrimination laws. But my natural response was to say, "are you kidding me?" I am an older, white guy, with enough savings to invest in a rental property, and who has for over sixty years lived a life of peaceful coexistence with all of my neighbors and fellow Californians. I subscribe to the Dutch idea of live and let live! Just because I am a white male, I am constantly accused of being afraid of the changing color of the neighborhood. That is total BS. Some of the biggest jerks I know are white, but I put up with them anyway, because they are my oldest friends… I don't care where you went to school, what color your skin is or what you and your friends do in the bedroom. All I care about is, can you make the payments on time? Will you take care of the place and not bother the neighbors? But I must admit, I cannot live with this guy living in my neighborhood. He may well be the nicest man on earth, but his persona is what bothers me. Why would a 'nice' man want to make himself look so evil? Who is he trying to intimidate? The facial tattoos are not like putting color in your hair, or eyeliner or even lip rings. The message this guy is sending is unmistakable anger and hostility. So I told my PM to tell him the place had already been rented. I know, that is a Little White Lie, but what am I supposed to do? I do not want to be a target of a discrimination suit, but I am the property owner and I do make value judgements based on my own financial exposure and safety. I have to be discriminating! I don't want to have the Symbionese Liberation Army moving in. My PM said he understood, then immediately resigned…I think he thought I was referring to an army of simian apes. He is only 27 years old, so I guess I can forgive him."  Everyone from Charles Krauthammer to Morning Joe Scarborough has their pointed tongues out for Donald Trump. They all say things like, "Belittling your Attorney General" is no way to treat your cabinet. "Trump is his own worst enemy," referring to his daily tweets. Or, Trump's claims that "serious numbers of illegal voting" may have cost him the popular vote, which is always 'qualified' by commentary that those claims are totally "unsubstantiated" and "false".
Let's just start by saying that in an unnerving and overwhelming number of instances, Trump's "outrageous lies" have been, more often than not, proven to be true. Starting with the claim that John McCain was not his idea of a hero. The MSM went bonkers (which is laughable because just one election cycle ago they trashed McCain as an alt-right ideologue). But in the end, the myths and the truth about McCain supports Trump's position. (http://www.alternet.org/story/95825/i_spent_years_as_a_pow_with_john_mccain%2C_and_his_finger_should_not_be_near_the_red_button) Trump has claimed that millions of illegal votes may have cost him the popular vote. In California alone, recent studies show that hundreds of thousands of votes came from areas that have more registered voters than people eligible to vote! (http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-warns-california-clean-voter-registration-lists-face-federal-lawsuit/) Trump claimed that EPA rules were hurting US employment figures. He was roundly criticized because the media focused on select industry regulations to make their case that more regulation would increase jobs (even as seven years of Obama era EPA expansion hadn't helped the 93 million unemployed find work anytime soon). (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2015/09/14/regulations-kill-jobs-data-show) This misuse of the English language is probably the most galling aspect of the blatant leftist attempt to effect a coup. I cannot stomach supposedly educated, highly compensated, and oft quoted officials dropping pejorative words into their comments, when the correct word would have performed just as well. Unless, of course, they are purposely trying to create anger or frustration with their audience. There are literally thousands of examples, but lets just talk about two: Trump 'slammed' Jeff Sessions when he was interviewed by Sean Hannity. " If I had known he would recuse himself, I probably wouldn't have chosen him to be my Attorney General." This was characterized by the MSM as as an 'attack.' Later, Trump said Sessions was 'very weak' in his position regarding investigating Hillary's e-mail and unmasking transgressions. For this Trump was said to have 'ridiculed' Sessions. If my boss was accused of ridiculing every employee he criticized, he would have been out of a job. In fact, it is his job to analyse and fix the shortcomings of his employees. Trump is an expert at that, and though he may not be the most charitable person when it comes to job reviews, he gets results. I guess in the media and government, the concept of accepting responsibility for your actions is alien. Listening to your boss point out your shortcomings at your job is now considered 'ridicule'. This is leftist petulence and ignorance of our language, and how the real world works. Evaluating the effectiveness of an employee is called running a business. It isn't always pretty or comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, but if you have ever worked for highly successful people you know they are rarely the most likable people in the room. In my experience, they are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: when work is over, they can be charming and approachable, but during working hours, don't waste their time with small talk or inaction. Running the most powerful country on Earth leaves no room for error, or for being 'very weak' at your job. And what about the unmasking by the DOJ leading up to the election? Trump claimed to have discovered that his 'wires were tapped' by Obama. Technically, 'wiretapping' is vernacular of another era. Only in third world countries do the CIA or the FBI climb phone polls to tap the gangsters. So the MSM had a field day with this quote, because they knew they could mischaracterize his claims as 'unsubstantiated.' He was accused of lying, because the press announced that there is no proof of 'wiretapping.' But we now know that someone leaked information about telephone calls by Mike Flynn, Donald Trump Jr., and others working inside the Trump campaign. How were these conversations acquired? Trump used the wrong term, but the facts are on his side; the emails that Wikileaks put out about the DNC proved that Loretta Lynch, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and John Podesta (and many others) had access to conversations that they could only have acquired by someone illegally unmasking the protected conversations of innocent Americans. (https://theintercept.com/2017/03/13/rand-paul-is-right-nsa-routinely-monitors-americans-communications-without-warrants/) Trump called it wiretapping, but it was illegal domestic spying. Whether Trump articulates the issues well is not up for debate; he is not the most well spoken President. But is he a pathological liar? The New York Times has printed an article collating all of Trump's lies, going back to the day he took the oath of office. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article The fact that they arbitrarily chose to start the score card then is telling, because all of the issues that they claim he lied about are the core issues of the left: immigration crime rates, gun deaths, the Russians attacking our democracy, Obama's birth certificate, universal health coverage, big oil and gas deals, police brutality, and the size of the crowd at Trump's swearing in ceremony or how many times his face has appeared on Time magazine, etc, etc. "We are using the word “lie” deliberately. Not every falsehood is deliberate on Trump's part. But it would be the height of naïveté to imagine he is merely making honest mistakes. He is lying." (NY Times) The word lie is a tool that is more destructive than suggesting Trump misstates or exaggerates. People who suffer from liars syndrome, who recklessly lie about just about everything, are usually unmasked at some point. Their friends and family, those closest to them are the first ones to recognize the problem. If Trump were a pathological liar, don't you think there would have been a line several blocks long, of people who know Trump well, lining up to point this out to the voters? What about his ex-wives, his former employees, his housekeeper's, his subcontractors, and even his kids? Many of those now screaming about his inability to tell the truth were all but best of friends 5, 10 or 15 years ago, whooping it up at high society social events, weddings and graduations at Martha's Vineyards, or one of Trump's resorts. Where were/are these people? Are they all under a threat? Are they all dead? Oh, sorry, that would be Hillary's detractors…. There is no mention of his long history of real estate success, his business acumen or how he works with manufacturers, builders, or bankers. The NY Times list of lies is so obviously slanted to reflect the arguments ideologues have over what is 'true' and what is 'hateful' or 'biased' that is hard to take it seriously. They are taking the tweets, the rally speeches, the political rhetoric of a Manhattan business bulldog and trying to compare it to polished politicians, campaign operatives and lawyers, or a media spokesperson. Just as the editors of the NY Times piece states, not every falsehood is deliberate. But isn't that universally true? What Trump accomplished, beating Hillary at her own game, is so far fetched, so unprecedented, and so offensive to the left, that they have to resort to ad hominem attacks on his character, on speech patterns, even the brand of clothing than Melania wears. The media lies by omission, ignoring proof that many democrats, journalists, and editors have colluded to create a narrative to try to discredit everything about Trump, so as to eventually remove him from his duly elected position in the White House. Some of which borders on treason since it so overtly calls for the overthrow of a duly elected government. (http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/02/senator-perdue-democrats-sabotaging-trump-sessions/) We can take some solace in the fact that they do not find fault in many things Trump has said about really important issues. Since it isn't listed, I guess we can assume they are OK with other pronouncements of Trump's administration. According to the NY Times piece, Trump hasn't lied about the IRS illegally investigating the Tea Party, or how it refused to grant them the same tax exemptions they routinely grant to Islamic or Progressive political organizations. He hasn't lied about the massive fraud found in many of the Obama era military programs, where 6.5 trillion tax dollars were apparently misplaced and untraceable. (http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/6-5-trillion-missing-from-defense-department/) He is apparently telling the truth about the Paris Climate Agreements, where the US would have been on the hook for upwards of $3 billion (some say the number is closer to $3 trillion after all is said and done over 30 years). (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-paris-climate-agreement-was-a-terrible-deal-for-the-us/article/2624974) He has been honest, I guess, since the NY Times doesn't challenge his assessment that Hillary and Obama left a void in the middle east, which allowed ISIS to form a massive army by grabbing abandoned US military weapons. Or that since Trump took office, we have had only one online video of a German hostage being beheaded because they couldn't collect a ransom for him, versus the almost nightly parade of beheadings, tortures and mass murders starting in 2014. No, they do not talk about Trump's lies about building a wall, restarting the economy, fighting and winning the war on radical Islamic terrorism, or reducing regulations on business and entrepreneurship. Or fixing the ObamaCare clusterf**k, or rebuilding the support for and the necessary equipment required for our military, immigration and police operations. Or how the Veterans Administration has modernized it's approach with integrated outsourcing, fostered by Trump's appointee, Dr. David Shulkin, who has extensive VA experience, but also seems comfortable thinking outside the bureaucracy-box. We are coming to the end of the First 200 Days of the new administration and we have learned a lot.
And we know that it is difficult to get any real news about how America is charting the waters of world leadership and the pursuit of freedom and justice for all, because the left leaning press is still angry about Trump's victory and they are not going to accept his administration under any circumstance. They hold the digital paintbrush and will continue to create their own reality unless or until they go bankrupt. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/wolff/2016/02/14/wolff-prints-dead-but-so-digital/80284046/) I guess the question is, who will outlast who? Will Trump survive a full term, or will much of the fake news media go under first? But all is not lost, because as of right now, DJT is in charge, and the unhappy people are on the outside looking in...  CNN's Fareed Zakaria, referring to a recent Pew Survey, said "On the question of confidence in various leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin got slightly higher marks than Trump. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel got almost twice as much support as Trump." When I see something like this, I instinctively know it is a fake interpretation. There is no way anyone with the slightest knowledge of how surveys are taken or scored would suggest Zakaria's interpretation could be credible. Remember, this is the guy who blamed Hillary's loss on the ignorance and racism of the American voter. "The election of Donald Trump is really a kind of class rebellion against people like us, educated professionals who live in cities, who have cosmopolitan views about things," Zakaria said. So it shouldn't be surprising that he would interpret any survey through the same resentful Progressive lense he applies to his worldview. Like any data, it can be interpreted in many ways. Here is why I believe his report is contrived: First, the question (which is not revealed) is about 'world affairs'. "On the question of confidence in various leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs…" What, exactly, was the question? Who were the respondents? How were they selected? Was this survey conducted in California, Ohio, Kentucky, Paris, Ireland, or Yemen? The context and conditions under which the questions were asked and who participated, and how that was determined, play an enormous role in what kind of responses you might get. I am sure the Pew report does specify these points, but Zakaria doesn't. If you are asking about world leaders and world affairs, shouldn't the survey be worldwide? If the survey asked specifically about Global Warming, you might expect one kind of answer. If it asked about refugees, or the overwhelming flood of unskilled and undereducated Muslims into European countries, you might expect another response. I don't think Angela Merkel would have scored so high had the survey been conducted exclusively in Germany. But what if 'affairs' mentioned food shortages in Venezuela? Or the kidnapping and rape rates in Germany having been exacerbated by the massive increase of unvetted Muslim refugees? What if the question mentioned the drastic reduction in mass bombing and vehicular murders, TV broadcast beheadings and homeland terror attacks and unvetted illegal US immigration rates just since Trump's inauguration? How would Putin and Xi Jinping be judged in regard to those issues, upon which Trump actually has tangible influence? How can anyone correlate answers to subjective questions about "doing the right thing' regarding the entire world, or should it have been tied to German, French, Chinese, or Korean policy affairs? Kim Jong Il is a world affair, but he is not threatening Russia or China. Residents of those two domains would most likely give their leaders great marks, since the only news they see about North Korea is how the US is threatening them with nuclear war. Who is determining what the right thing is? Is 'the right thing' expressed in the question? Is the right thing up to the respondent to decide? Have you ever heard of a Trump hater who ever recognized something Trump did, on any issue, as 'the right thing to do?" So how were the respondents vetted and chosen? Were they surveyed about their preconceived notions? And if so, was a balance achieved before the survey taken? Zakaria never got into that…But his reference to far lefty Merkel, and Communists like Putin and Xi Juping as earning higher marks is consistent with his leftist sympathies. Finally, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Putin do not, in the same way as our elected officials, have to answer to anyone. They are leaders of monolithic parties of socialist (re: Communist) party organizations that fake democratic practices. They don't have constituents, or election promises to keep. They don't have to make compromises, or deal with venomous media assaults like Trump. Russian corruption and Chinese party authoritarianism are well documented. Open disagreements and policy debates are simply not permitted in China or Russia. Zakaria makes no distinctions between communist totalitarians and freely elected Presidents. Even if all of those survey prerequisites were implemented, Zakaria conveniently fails to mention them and then makes biased extrapolations from only a select few of the survey responses. Zakaria is talking about surveys of unknown masses, responding to nebulous questions, and then comparing apples to oranges! I guess he figures Trump voters are just too dumb to notice. But this is the typical template of CNN, the Contrived News Network.. |
Rick Elkin
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