President Donald Trump is often irritated at the mainstream media, but he had particular reason to be angry this week. By any metric, this has been one of the most successful – if not THE most successful – period of his presidency. A date has been set for the summit with North Korea. His administration negotiated the release of three American citizens imprisoned by the Kim regime. Trump yanked us out of a disastrous nuclear deal that threatened the security of our country and our allies. The economy is roaring, the tax cuts are working – you would have to basically hate America to find a wellspring of negativity to report about this week.
Which, of course, many journalists in the Washington media do. And so it wasn’t hard for them to ignore all of that good stuff that the American people actually care about to focus on Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Cohen, Russia, Melania Trump’s anti-bullying booklet, and any other trivia they could use to make the administration look bad.
On Wednesday, Trump had had enough. “The Fake News is working overtime,” he observed on Twitter. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?”
Whoa. Take away OUR credentials? How DARE you, Mr. President!
That was the response from the media, which loves playing foil to this White House until they get called on their BS. A reporter at the next White House press briefing asked Sarah Sanders, “How is the suggestion of taking American journalists’ press credentials away advocating for a free press in this country?”
Sanders wasn’t in the mood.
“The fact that I’m standing here taking questions,” she said. “The fact that the president took questions from your colleagues just two hours ago demonstrates this White House’s commitment to accessibility and to providing information to the American public.
“At the same time, the press has a responsibility to put out accurate information,” she said. “Just yesterday The New York Times accused the Secretary of State for being AWOL — AWOL — when he was flying across the globe to bring three Americans home. That is an outrageous claim. Just earlier this week, The Washington Post accused the First Lady of not living in the White House. That outrageous claim was then repeated again in this room.
“We are here,” Sanders concluded. “We are taking questions. We are doing everything we can to provide regular and constant information to the American people and there is a responsibility by you guys to provide accurate information.”
This week, Rush Limbaugh opined that Sanders was the best press secretary we’ve had in modern memory, and we’d be hard pressed to disagree. This White House regularly exposes the fraud that is the “free press” in Washington, and we can’t get enough of it. Maybe one of these days, ethical journalists will take heed and change their tune.
