Well, it looks like Trump may have started another feud.
Earlier today, in response to NBC’s decision to publish the details of the meeting that led Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to brand the President a “f*%^ing moron,” Trump essentially threatened to try and yank NBC’s broadcast licenses.
Here’s the laughable – but nevertheless egregious – tweet:
Just to be clear, that is not going to happen. And if he thinks that’s even remotely (get it?) possible, well then he’s even more of a moron than Tillerson thinks he is.
But while far-fetched, it’s still unnerving. We’ve long argued that Donald Trump isn’t so much authoritarian as he is stupid and egotistical. When he says things like that, it’s probably not so much that he’s knowingly trying to emulate the authoritarian leaders that he has, at various times, expressed admiration for. Rather, it’s more that because he is completely bereft of sense, he thinks it’s not only feasible, but justified to shut down media outlets. It’s not part of some grand plan to subjugate the masses – the only grand plan here is “preserve Donald Trump’s pride” at any cost.
Anyway, the The National Association of Broadcasters is not amused. Here’s their statement:
The founders of our nation set as a cornerstone of our democracy the First Amendment, forever enshrining and protecting freedom of the press.
It is contrary to this fundamental right for any government official to threaten the revocation of an FCC license simply because of a disagreement with the reporting of a journalist.
Right. And see in this case, NBC is actually doing more than just holding public officials accountable. They are warning Americans about something that is potentially dangerous: a President who apparently thinks that his disdain for “downward sloping charts” is a good enough reason to ramp up the country’s nuclear arsenal.
I mean, that level of ineptitude is almost impossible to conceive of. Which is probably why Tillerson found himself resorting to the profane.
I like him because he says what he thinks, isn’t beholding to anyone, and will drain the swamp.
Said no one with a brain, ever.
I said when he took office he would be the best or the worst ever……Unfortunately, I think I’m going to be correct
Unfortunately, the swamp cannot be drained given that Trump, his appointees and family, and are all clogging up the drain-hole.
Exactly. Swamping the drain
Clearly Trump is not just a nuclear proliferation increase order of magnitude “moron,” he continues to demonstrate is also a Constitutional content “moron.”
However, we are broaching a separate problem here in that the so called “free press” is today largely composed of advertiser (including political agenda advertising) driven content and or direct paid content by special interests. Special interests that are often not adequately disclaimed in said content. As a result, for the past three plus decades (the age of the marketeer), there has been a growing assault on the truth, on verifiable and reproducible facts, and independent investigative journalism. Not just in political media, but even in the peer reviewed professional journals that serve the sciences.
The general result is the intellectual crippling of the less than 20% of the country that might be accurately accused of being at least occasional “critical thinkers. Simply because on so many subjects today, it is extremely difficult to determine what the factual, reproducible, bottom line and absolute unbiased truth really might be because it is so buried in incomparable masses of biased information – including outright purposeful for profit lies.
Trump didn’t invent fake (though he is the personification of the word), or “fake news.” He uses misdirection, hyperbole, and out right lies that he does invent in his daily Twitter Texts. His misdirection and lies (around 1,400 documented ones since taking office) – only confuse the issues and prevent their timely and efficient solutions and the obtuse Trump’s general incompetence – limits any progress – in any direction on those problems and issues.
Trump’s “license” as President (a by-product of a corrupted election process) – should be revoked by Congress (or the military). He and his enablers like the Republican leadership are damaging and dangerous to the US (and most if not all the rest of the world). The Republican leadership should be prosecuted fully for their failure to perform their Constitutional obligations in removing a mentally ill President from office and the general corruption of their Congressional offices in continuing to support Trump.
We’ll have to free the “free press” from profit based “truths” – after the self-proclaimed inventor and primary user of “fake news” is a forgettable footnote in a part of US history. A foot note that will surely be benevolently forgotten in future US history instructor course content – and not for the first time US history was cleansed of our mistakes.