Will Trump’s War On The News Media Work?

With President Trump’s “fake news” crusade now turned up to eleven, we are left little choice but to assume it is part of a broader de-legitimizing strategy. And strategy is the job of Steve Bannon, Trump’s White House Chief Strategist. Bannon told the New York Times in January that the “media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.” Bannon was talking about how the media was wrong about the 2016 election, never mind that the polls were not all that far off from the popular vote tally. “The media here is the opposition party,” said Bannon in the Times interview. “They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.” If it is a blueprint, Trump’s anti-media bombast is a plan likely architected by Steve Bannon.

• • •

Trump’s Shrinking Malignancy

It might not feel like it right now, but President Donald Trump is a symptom of a shrinking malignancy in America. This is what we must remember as we move forward. In hindsight we should have expected a backlash in response to Barack Obama’s historic presidency, especially in a nation with much work to do on race relations. That malignancy wasn’t going to fade away without a fight.

• • •

Is Trump Trying To Win? Because It’s Not Clear To Me

In the week after the two conventions, Donald Trump is suffering from an existential crisis of candidacy, something you’d expect to happen during primary season, resulting in an exit from the race. The only problem for Trump is that he actually won the Republican primary and was nominated by his party to be our next president. So what else can explain Trump’s post-convention failings? Is it just Trump being Trump? I guess for most of his supporters nothing has changed, save for the “lamestream media” being unfair to their candidate, as they’d like us to believe. His supporters have already established that in their minds Trump can do no wrong, and some actually say this out-loud. The problem for Trump, however, is that he needs to win over people less inclined to believe he can do no wrong, and he is failing miserably.

• • •

Yes Trump Can Win. Democrats Are Deluded If They Think Hillary Is A Lock.

The normal state of mind for the average Democratic voter is despair. Democrats and liberals fear their candidate will lose, always. But as it turns out, at least in presidential years, this fear of loss is a catalyst that gets Democrats and liberals to the polls. That has led to popular vote wins for Democrats in five of the last six presidential elections. The only exception was in 2004 when George W. Bush won the popular vote, giving him a second term as president. Unfortunately that pesky electoral college (and a controversial Supreme Court ruling) led to Bush, a Republican, winning in 2000 even though he lost the popular vote to Al Gore, a Democrat. For some reason this fear of loss doesn’t fuel Democrats to the polls during non-presidential years, a topic we’ll bookmark for another day.

• • •

Enraged Trump Followers Subvert GOP, Country

On Tuesday, Donald Trump won the Indiana GOP primary, and with that, his quest to conquer the Republican Party is complete. That’s because Ted Cruz bowed out of the presidential contest last night, and today John Kasich also dropped out. That leaves Donald Trump, the bigoted, hateful, misogynist, loudmouth, xenophobic symbol of American white supremacists, as the presumptive nominee of the Grand Old Party.

• • •

Tell It Like It Is: Donald Trump’s Bloodsport Appeal

Keyed-up patrons of the bloviating orange-hued candidate regularly say Donald Trump “tells it like it is.”  But what does that even mean? Taken at face-value, a person who “tells it like it is” should be a person speaking the truth, right? But given Trump’s propensity to turn reality to a putty his tiny hands find malleable, why do his defenders continue to insist he “tells it like it is”?

• • •
1 2 3 8