Friday, December 2, 2016

When is the President to be believed?

How important is it to believe what the President says?  Do we listen to his speeches and expect him to deliver on promises he makes? Do we listen to his words and expect them to be meaningful and true? Not according to Cory Lewandowski, a spokesman of the next President.

“This is the problem with the media. You guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally,” Lewandowski said. “The American people didn’t. They understood it. They understood that sometimes — when you have a conversation with people, whether it’s around the dinner table or at a bar — you’re going to say things, and sometimes you don’t have all the facts to back it up.”

I suggest the media ignore the reality show that Mr. Trump expects to star in as President, or at minimum consign it to the Entertainment section of the news. Go straight to the policy makers he is choosing for his administration. Take him at his word that he will only go out and “make America great again” by basking in the glow of his followers at rallies around the country. Because Mr. Trump is not to be taken literally, the media must begin to dig a little deeper and report the machinations of the new administration from the actions and policies of those who have been delegated to govern. 

Mr. Trump should be treated as a figure head, a puppet, a pretty face to be trotted out at rallies as a rock star and summarily ignored. The media should take it’s collective eye off the shiny object attracting all the attention and concentrate on what is actually affecting the citizens of this great country. Will they?

Will they report on the cabinet that is starting to look like a Goldman Sachs board meeting?  Will they dig deep to find problems with the new Secretary of Education, a billionaire supporter of privatization who wants to gut public education? Will they look at the head of Health and Human Services who famously challenged the media to find even one woman who couldn’t afford an abortion? How about the new CIA director, Mike Pompeo, who would be happy to criminalize muslims across the country and torture suspected terrorists in violation of US and international law?

The media is in trouble. Nothing like this has ever happened in our country. We don’t have a leader, we have a corporate structure with a CEO. The CEO has delegated the sausage making of governance to his lieutenants. The media must learn to adapt and report on what is really happening in the government. Our country is at stake. 


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