Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   (530) 515-2137   Red Bluff Daily News   8/21/2018

Methinks they do protest too much

“Where to start?” over what, as I see it, seemed a rather overwrought, overdramatic editorial effort infused with a misplaced sense of assault from President Donald J. Trump. Our paper provided one of 300+ editorials in a coordinated effort suggesting the news media are not colluding against Trump, I guess. “A free press is not your enemy” attempted to wrap all of news media with an unassailable purity of motive and execution in its coverage of Trump’s presidency—with umbrage so self-righteous that you would think:

1) Some journalists were being silenced—but that would describe the way conservatives, not reporters, are being treated by the social media through “shadow banning” and account suspensions; 2) Physical threats, attacks and intimidation were being doled out to journalists—but that would be the way conservative outlets (and speakers) like The Daily Caller and Fox News have been treated by leftist mobs;

3) The apparatus of the government was being used to spy on, and intimidate, reporters—but that would be tactics of the media’s darling-of-a-president, Barack Obama, who used surveillance to spy on reporter James Rosen and anyone who questioned or opposed Obama’s Iran deal. Were there mass editorials condemning Obama’s Ben Rhodes’ bragging of manipulating the “echo chamber” of “know nothing 27-year-old” reporters and creating a nonexistent band wagon of support for the Iran deal?

As I have said in the past, the more local is the news reporting—local papers, radio and TV—the more accessible, responsible and accountable are the reporters, editors, staff and “on air talent.” I’ve seen only thorough and fair treatment of local or regional issues and events. It’s almost as if local media is sensitive to wanting to “get the facts” and present all sides to the readers and viewers that pay the tab, as it were, and who can easily sniff out agenda journalism. That’s not the problem and all who fall in that category have no reason to think that I, local Republicans, conservatives or Trump himself are targeting our fellow local citizens, churchgoers and service group members.

However, it would help us all to see things your way if you didn’t resort to misstatements in your editorial: “He has called us ‘the enemy of the people.’ He disparages our work as ‘fake news.’” No, Trump has, perhaps imprecisely, singled out the purveyors of mis- and dis-information, not all of news media. I think his use of the phrase “enemy of the people” as over-broad and tinged with overtones of “gun-barrel” discipline meted out by totalitarians—and I don’t for one second believe that it’s appropriate for news media to take it in that way. I stand by calling them “enemies of Trump’s supporter.”

It should be admitted, however, that much of the national press, network and cable news (FOX News aside) have no qualms believing that Trump is unfit for office, and a Putin puppet; they think their job is to help remove him with overwhelmingly critical coverage, avoiding fairly informing Americans of anything positive that Trump is accomplishing. Likewise, they rarely dispute, or “fact check,” his critics.

Even when the economic situation would warrant accolades, it’s due to Barack Obama’s recovery. Last Friday’s AP article, “Where White House touts a boom, most economists see a blip,” strained at the slightest credit—allowing only that “Trump’s chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow made his case for the boom. Calling mainstream predictions ‘pure nonsense,’ he declared that the expansion—already the second-longest on record—is merely in its ‘early innings.’” The writers go on to emphasize that “the economy grew for seven straight years under President Barack Obama before Trump took office early last year. Since then, it’s stayed steady, and the job market has remained strong.”

What’s wrong, “Fake News” you might say, is that Obama’s recovery was objectively the worst post-WWII recovery, his growth rate averaged about 1.7 percent and unemployment never succeeded in reducing the millions of those too discouraged to look for a job. It is worse than disingenuous to diminish the current economic expansion by airbrushing the highlights of Obama’s term into “objects-greater-than-actual-size.” The facts are: Trump’s GDP growth is double Obama’s, there are numerically more job openings than available unemployed workers, and business and consumer confidence far exceeds Obama’s polled numbers.

Another article promoted former CIA Director John Brennan’s wild assertions, “Trump worked with Russians and now he’s desperate,” even describing Trump’s actions as “nothing short of treasonous.” Well, let’s see if the Associated Press notices that Brennan and former-DNI Clapper shamelessly backed off of the “treason” rhetoric (Meet the Press).

“In sum, many within the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, the NSC, and the State Department may have been involved in the greatest scandal in American electoral history, by directing agents, informants, and employees to help one campaign to harm another — and then, even after the election, to work to undermine a sitting president. In addition, these rogue agencies spent two years fighting congressional requests to release incriminating information. And then, when they were forced against their will to cough up some documents, they redacted them so heavily that they’re almost undecipherable.

“But somewhere, somehow, someone must explain and rectify the past. For two years, the top employees of these agencies, most appointed during the Obama administration, have been engaged in unethical and illegal behavior, [to throw the election to Hillary Clinton] and then, after the election, to subvert the new presidency.

“In other words, those who are warning of Russian collusion efforts to warp an election now work for agencies that in the recent past were doing precisely what they now rightly accuse the Russians of doing. The damage that Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and others have done to the reputations of the agencies they ran will live on well after their tenures are over. The police were not policed — and so became like the enemies they warned us about.” (V.D. Hansen) The media earns its criticism when it ignores that scandal.