(ThyBlackMan.com) Last Sunday on CNN, the network’s White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, said that President Donald Trump’s tweet of a video that featured him wrestling an individual with a computer-generated CNN logo for a head was “going to lead to a journalist being hurt.”
As readers are likely aware, CNN has been at war with Trump since the week of his inauguration when, in an unprecedented move, the new president called out the network for being a purveyor of fake news.
Since the wrestling video tweet, many on the left, in the establishment press and even some Republicans have been engaging in a prodigious degree of hyperbole, claiming that Trump’s tweet of the video was tantamount to an incitement to violence and might lead to journalists getting injured or killed.
Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Republican strategist Ana Navarro said Trump’s tweets about the press were likely to “get somebody killed in the media.” On Monday’s “MSNBC Live,” anchor Katy Tur said that Trump is effectively advocating violence against reporters.
Also on Sunday, CNN correspondent Tom Foreman took a wild stab at ginning up racialist sentiment over the tweet when he attempted to draw a connection between Trump’s alleged bigotry and the alleged creator of the wrestling video, who allegedly posted offensive content online in the past.
Obviously, the political left in America has conveniently chosen not to distinguish between satire (like the wrestling tweet) and the many outright incitements to violence in which they have engaged in recent months, and which some argue could have helped prompt James T. Hodgkinson to open fire on Republican lawmakers at a congressional baseball practice last month.
Of course, the left’s complaints are illustrative of the hypocrisy and projection to which I recently referred in this space, since it has been well-established that it is the left that typically acts out with violence, rather than the right.
Considering the Virginia congressional baseball practice shooting and the left’s penchant for fabricating news stories, it occurred to me that all they would have to do to ostensibly validate their claims would be to stage an active-shooter situation or some other form of violence at a press venue. One can only pray that they do not purpose to capitalize on this opportunity, but it would certainly be in keeping with their character.
It is apparent that the establishment press can’t take the heat in being called on their deceitfulness and fraud, since they typically react to Donald Trump’s condemnation of their actions like overdressed 16th-century European nobles confronted by a mob of angry peasants brandishing rusty farm implements. Still, it is important to realize that they are responding in this manner not because they are dishonest, double standard-embracing, effete snobs with infantile sensibilities, nor even because they know that Trump is speaking the truth.
When news outlets feature President Donald Trump charging them with proffering fake news, they know that many viewers will believe it by default. A feature of the bully pulpit, regardless of who happens to hold the office, is that the voice of an American president is louder than anyone else’s simply because it belongs to the American president.
In addition to the left’s stark dread over the prospect that Donald Trump’s election signified a fundamental change in the course of politics in America, their current dismay lies in their knowledge of the power of the bully pulpit coupled with the potency of social media (in this case, Twitter). The call for Donald Trump to stop tweeting because they deem it “unpresidential” is merely a pretext, an attempt to camouflage that fear.
Now, the left is faced with a president who is by no means bashful with regard to exploiting social media venues such as Twitter. Barack Obama and his surrogates employed social media quite deftly; however, Obama made great pretense toward appearing “presidential,” so the frequency and tone of his tweets were greatly attenuated compared to Trump’s.
Trump’s tone and proclivity for hitting back twice as hard when attacked reflects the New York street fighter who came up having to deal with the New York political and bureaucratic machine. If one owns so much as one rental property or a small business in New York City, one has to deal with gangsters; if not real, live Mafiosi, then operatives who behave in a modality nearly indistinguishable from same. Imagine how tough and savvy an individual has to be to realize huge success in real estate development in such an environment.
Though our president may not look like a street fighter, this is what he is, and it is to America’s benefit. Voters elected Trump because they were tired of presidents collectively shafting the electorate whilst appearing eminently presidential. Evidently, they were willing to take a chance on one who was willing to roll around in the gutter with his enemies, beat them at their own game and emerge with his hand-stitched silk business suit virtually unsoiled.
To understand the degree and the nature of the histrionics over President Donald Trump’s use of social media, one must understand that the political left perceives it as a harbinger of the wholesale demise of their monopoly on the news and a potential negation of decades of progressive momentum in America. It’s that simple.
Written by Erik Rush
Official website; http://www.erikrush.com
