President Trump: Making America Great Again...

[Topper]

But is it a real leak? Fox (and breitbart) tells me that's the real story here.

Lots of interesting possibilities here. By pulling this story back so quickly is Trump risking pissing off part of his hardcore base?

I don't pretend to know the hearts and minds of his supporters, but I hear they want something done on immigration. Thus, anything he does will be something.

[PaloAltoCougar]

The Christian Conservatives for Trump FB page popped up on my feed. It's a poor man's Onion, but provides about 30 seconds of mirth (Starbucks donuts secretly promoting Shakira Law) before becoming tiresome.

[Walter Sobchak]

5 years ago I would have been right with you. My daily news consumption basically consisted of Drudge, and I got my commentary from Instapundit. I was a huge supporter of citizen journalism, and I still am. But there still is a critical need for journalism as a profession. Despite biases all over, I would still inherently trust a properly vetted story from a professional reporter over a citizen journalist. You get burned from time to time with that level of trust, but traditional media corrects itself better than the likes of Drudge.

The scorn that is being heaped on the media is well deserved. They were supposed to be the vanguards and they let us all down, tremendously so:

In reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation -- we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of.
[...]

We have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge.

[...]

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.

Fuck the Times. Fuck the media. I'll never forgive them.

Never been a Drudge reader. I hang out at The Atlantic and The Intercept_ and other such venues that still ask important questions. I still visit The American Conservative for my fix of Buchanan. Unfortunately, anti-interventionalist/anti-war voices are getting fewer and farther between now I'm afraid. One party would like to start another World War with Russia, while the other seems fixated on a military engagement with Iran. Lose, lose. We all keep losing.

[Jeff Lebowski]

The scorn that is being heaped on the media is well deserved. They were supposed to be the vanguards and they let us all down, tremendously so:



Fuck the Times. Fuck the media. I'll never forgive them.

Never been a Drudge reader. I hang out at The Atlantic and The Intercept_ and other such venues that still ask important questions. I still visit The American Conservative for my fix of Buchanan. Unfortunately, anti-interventionalist/anti-war voices are getting fewer and farther between now I'm afraid. One party would like to start another World War with Russia, while the other seems fixated on a military engagement with Iran. Lose, lose. We all keep losing.

I get this argument. But Trump is not berating the media because they are not being a watchdog or fulfilling their proper role in society. He is berating the media for not kissing his ass.

[Walter Sobchak]

I get this argument. But Trump is not berating the media because they are not being a watchdog or fulfilling their proper role in society. He is berating the media for not kissing his ass.

I was specifically responding to the contention someone made that "[Fox News] has cultivated a generation of voters who simply don't trust the media when it tells them something counter to their beliefs. And now we have a presidency who openly calls reporters dishonest and liars."

I disagree. The media itself created this mistrust. See the coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War. See Jayson Blair. See Season 5 of The Wire.

Fox News the proximate cause?! Please.

I wholeheartedly agree that Trump has leveraged (and continues to leverage) that mistrust to his own ends. Yesterday was a performance, not one for you or I or for the media members in that room... it was for his die-hard reality-TV-loving base. And it was a brilliant pep rally; great ratings, I guarantee.

[YOhio]

Walter! The language!

[Jeff Lebowski]

I was specifically responding to the contention someone made that "[Fox News] has cultivated a generation of voters who simply don't trust the media when it tells them something counter to their beliefs. And now we have a presidency who openly calls reporters dishonest and liars."

I disagree. The media itself created this mistrust. See the coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War. See Jayson Blair. See Season 5 of The Wire.

Fox News the proximate cause?! Please.

Gotcha.

I am not arguing that Fox caused the problem or that it is not a real problem. My point is that Trump and Fox are not proposing a solution at all, they just want a persistent right-wing bias. Same dog, different leg.

I wholeheartedly agree that Trump has leveraged (and continues to leverage) that mistrust to his own ends. Yesterday was a performance, not one for you or I or for the media members in that room... it was for his die-hard reality-TV-loving base. And it was a brilliant pep rally; great ratings, I guarantee.

Indeed.

[BlueK]

Yesterday was a performance, not one for you or I or for the media members in that room... it was for his die-hard reality-TV-loving base. And it was a brilliant pep rally; great ratings, I guarantee.

But ultimately pointless. He already won. If this is what his hardcore base wants him to keep doing, then they're stupid or they're also trolling the rest of the country. It appears this may be starting to backfire on him though. Check out this tracking approval/disapproval poll to see the trend downward.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/ga...-approval.aspx

[Walter Sobchak]

But ultimately pointless. He already won. If this is what his hardcore base wants him to keep doing, then they're stupid or they're also trolling the rest of the country

The "IF" conditional for your then clause evaluated to "true" a long, long time ago.

It appears this may be starting to backfire on him though. Check out this tracking approval/disapproval poll to see the trend downward.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/ga...-approval.aspx

You keep appealing to the same polls that predicted President Trump wouldn't win.

[Topper]

You keep appealing to the same polls that predicted President Trump wouldn't win.

This is why I don't trust everybody who says that Trump is necessarily in the dumps. I believed this as he ran through the GOP primaries and as he defeated Hillary. At each stage, I thought he was a goner. The prognosticators want to direct what happens not evaluate and watch it happen.

[byu71]

Your buddy Mr. Spicer says fake news.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-roundups.html

Trump throws out bull crap and supporters believe it. Media throws out bull crap and Trump haters believe it

[PaloAltoCougar]

lol

[Walter Sobchak]

lol

Stuff like this and that psychologist thing you (or someone else) posted the other day play right into President Trump's hand.

Fighting hyperbole and theatrics with hyperbole and theatrics isn't going to work.

[Northwestcoug]

I was specifically responding to the contention someone made that "[Fox News] has cultivated a generation of voters who simply don't trust the media when it tells them something counter to their beliefs. And now we have a presidency who openly calls reporters dishonest and liars."

I disagree. The media itself created this mistrust. See the coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War. See Jayson Blair. See Season 5 of The Wire.

Fox News the proximate cause?! Please.

I wholeheartedly agree that Trump has leveraged (and continues to leverage) that mistrust to his own ends. Yesterday was a performance, not one for you or I or for the media members in that room... it was for his die-hard reality-TV-loving base. And it was a brilliant pep rally; great ratings, I guarantee.

How about this? The Lewinski story that traditional media wanted to suppress, which catapulted Drudge to fame, allowed Fox News to take hold. Fox News's existence relies on distrust of traditional media. It gives an official platform for the view that if you're a conservative, you cannot trust traditional media.

I don't disagree at all that media has shot itself in the foot numerous times in the examples you cite, and it has ultimately damaged their credibility. But I'm not ready to burn the whole institution to the ground and rely on my own for news. I just want the pendulum to swing back towards a more skeptical but not outright mistrust of media.

[BlueK]

Trump throws out bull crap and supporters believe it. Media throws out bull crap and Trump haters believe it

Stick trump in front of a microphone and let him talk with no media analysis whatsoever and trump is still an idiot. I don't need commentary to know that. I'm just not his target demographic I guess.