A friend of mine who lives in Manhattan told me this morning that he was appalled at the way Donald Trump responded to the press at his news conference about raising money for veterans. It was a typical response from someone living inside the bubble, but it surely will not be the general response around the country.
First, let me be clear: not everyone living in New York or Washington DC is inside the bubble. A person has to make a choice to inhabit the bubble. That gets done by listening to the media and certain politicians and believing without question that what they are saying is true or mostly true.
Certainly, the conventional wisdom is that taking on the press is a mistake. Telling a reporter who is asking a question that he is a "sleaze" is an even bigger mistake. At least, that's the case in the bubble.
But consider for a moment the reporter that Trump called a "sleaze". This is an ABC reporter who a few days ago told the world in one of his reports that Juanita Broadrick's claim that Bill Clinton raped her decades ago has been "discredited". Now, there has never been a trial of Broadrick's charges because she did not report the attack (she says she was too scared to do so.) No one as ever discredited her story, however. Indeed, in the 1990's during the Clinton presidency, the story was carried by the same network that is now telling listeners that it was "discredited". So what does this mean? Simply put, the ABC reporter in question was either too lazy to do the research to file an accurate report or else he just reported whatever the Clinton campaign told him to say. Calling him a sleaze is not inaccurate.
Or let's consider what was happening at the press conference. Trump had raised almost six million dollars for veterans. Some of it had been disbursed, but much of it just was distributed. The focus of the media was not on the cash going to the vets, however. No, they were too interested in trying to find fault with either how the money was raised or to whom it went. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton used the Clinton Foundation to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign governments and citizens who clearly expected favors in return from the Secretary of State. That subject hardly interests the same media.
So Trump called them out. He called them the whores that they are. The average American understands exactly what happened. Only in the bubble is there supposed "outrage" at Trump's behavior. A reporter can trash a poor woman's reputation by claiming that she falsely accused Bill Clinton of rape; that's just another day at the office. When Trump calls that reporter a sleaze, however, it's an outrage, over the top, just inexcusable.
I think it's safe to say that Trump won that exchange.
First, let me be clear: not everyone living in New York or Washington DC is inside the bubble. A person has to make a choice to inhabit the bubble. That gets done by listening to the media and certain politicians and believing without question that what they are saying is true or mostly true.
Certainly, the conventional wisdom is that taking on the press is a mistake. Telling a reporter who is asking a question that he is a "sleaze" is an even bigger mistake. At least, that's the case in the bubble.
But consider for a moment the reporter that Trump called a "sleaze". This is an ABC reporter who a few days ago told the world in one of his reports that Juanita Broadrick's claim that Bill Clinton raped her decades ago has been "discredited". Now, there has never been a trial of Broadrick's charges because she did not report the attack (she says she was too scared to do so.) No one as ever discredited her story, however. Indeed, in the 1990's during the Clinton presidency, the story was carried by the same network that is now telling listeners that it was "discredited". So what does this mean? Simply put, the ABC reporter in question was either too lazy to do the research to file an accurate report or else he just reported whatever the Clinton campaign told him to say. Calling him a sleaze is not inaccurate.
Or let's consider what was happening at the press conference. Trump had raised almost six million dollars for veterans. Some of it had been disbursed, but much of it just was distributed. The focus of the media was not on the cash going to the vets, however. No, they were too interested in trying to find fault with either how the money was raised or to whom it went. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton used the Clinton Foundation to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign governments and citizens who clearly expected favors in return from the Secretary of State. That subject hardly interests the same media.
So Trump called them out. He called them the whores that they are. The average American understands exactly what happened. Only in the bubble is there supposed "outrage" at Trump's behavior. A reporter can trash a poor woman's reputation by claiming that she falsely accused Bill Clinton of rape; that's just another day at the office. When Trump calls that reporter a sleaze, however, it's an outrage, over the top, just inexcusable.
I think it's safe to say that Trump won that exchange.
No comments:
Post a Comment