Donald J Trump, President of the United States, 8\/5\/18<\/em><\/p>\nThey are \u201c\u2026sick, dangerous, an enemy of the people.\u201d\u00a0 They are so dangerous that the President of the United States, using his \u201cbully pulpit,\u201d has made them the primary target of his attacks.\u00a0 In our reality show political world, he has cast himself as the \u201chero\u201d facing the massive attack of lies and hate.<\/p>\n
Many Presidents have set up \u201calternative enemies\u201d to their \u201cgood guy\u201d images:\u00a0 George W. Bush and the \u201caxis of evil,\u201d Ronald Reagan and the \u201cevil empire.\u201d\u00a0 And every President has had conflicts with the press.\u00a0 But, other than Richard Nixon, none have tried to establish the press as his personal enemy.\u00a0 And even Nixon did not try to incite this level of hatred towards them.<\/p>\n
President Trump has made his administration\u2019s primary goal to attack the \u201cMSM\u201d (mainstream media), trying to make them seem the evil enemy threatening to destroy the United States.\u00a0And, with one very notable exception, Fox News, he has claimed that the press is willing to lie, steal, create stories out of nothing, and in fact are willing to do anything to \u201cdestroy\u201d the Trump Administration.<\/p>\n
It is normal for a President to find domestic \u201crivals\u201d to contrast his views and programs.\u00a0 In Bill Clinton\u2019s Democratic administration, the first two years with a Congress of his own party was deemed a failure, most notably with healthcare.\u00a0 The Congress was more \u201cprogressive\u201d than the President, and Republicans weren\u2019t supporting him.\u00a0 It made Clinton look weak.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until the \u201cRevolution of 1994,\u201d when Congress swung to the right with the Republican Newt Gingrich as the new Speaker, that Clinton began to find success.\u00a0 It was in contrasting with the Gingrich\u2019s House of Representatives that Clinton was seen as becoming a more effective executive.\u00a0The government was shut down, and Clinton \u201cwon\u201d the exchange.\u00a0 He was able to \u201ccompromise\u201d and achieve some legislative action.<\/p>\n
Trump is in a similar position, starting from when he entered office in 2016.\u00a0 His Republican Congress provided little contrast, but an immense amount of frustration.\u00a0 Trump was the \u201cleader\u201d of the party, but, even as the \u201cgreat deal maker\u201d he was unable to negotiate many of his legislative programs, notably immigration and health care.\u00a0 He needed to find a contrast, \u201cb\u00eate noire\u201d to rail against, and one that wasn\u2019t a war hero and tragically ill.<\/p>\n
The \u201cliberal, corrupt, and dishonest\u201d media became the perfect foil.\u00a0 Jim Acosta and Don Lemmon of CNN are constant targets of the Presidential \u201ctweets,\u201d and Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski at MSNBC are \u201cpersonal friends\u201d who have \u201cturned against him.\u201d\u00a0 The \u201cfailing New York Times\u201d and the \u201cAmazon\/Bezo\u2019s Washington Post\u201d are both under constant attack.<\/p>\n
This use of the media as his foil has two major values for Trump.\u00a0 \u00a0First:\u00a0it gives his base something to focus on, an enemy that can be vilified and insulted.\u00a0 While that is apparent at more recent Trump rallies, with signs, middle-finger salutes, and shouted profanities; it has been going on almost from the beginning.\u00a0 The only slightly veiled contempt that Press Secretary Sarah Sanders uses when addressing the press conferences; and the unbridled hatred shown by senior advisor Stephen Miller; all set the tone that encourages more public attacks.\u00a0 Trump needs to be seen as \u201cwinning.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s not happening:\u00a0 not on the world stage, not in the courts, and even not in Congress.\u00a0So he can win against the press.<\/p>\n
As a long time coach I learned something early:\u00a0 to have a winning record, schedule losing opponents.\u00a0 But I also soon learned something else:\u00a0 to get the best out of my athletes, I needed to test them against the best opponents.\u00a0 We might lose, but we would become better.\u00a0 Trump has picked an opponent, the press, that generally doesn\u2019t fight back.\u00a0He wins, but he doesn\u2019t get better, or in this case, achieve a lot of his goals.<\/p>\n
Should the Democrats take back the House, the Senate, or both; it is likely that Trump, like Clinton, will focus his attacks on the Democrats instead of the media.\u00a0 It\u2019s a healthier target, and one that he can more effectively defeat, getting \u201cmore wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second value of attacking the media is more insidious.\u00a0 If the President can get a large portion of the American people believing that the \u201cfacts\u201d as reported are lies, then when the truth of his campaigns corruption and alignment with Russian intelligence is revealed, it will be more difficult to believe.\u00a0 If he can establish that the press is in fact, \u201c\u2026the enemy of the people;\u201d then when the press reports the reality of the Mueller results, the President can brush them off as, well, “fake news.”<\/p>\n
Twenty-five percent of Americans still approved of Richard Nixon the day he resigned from office.\u00a0That was in an era when most trusted in the press.\u00a0 In our much more fragmented news environment today, especially one with \u00a0Fox News as the Presidential spokesman; there will be a much higher percentage of Americans who will not believe in Mueller\u2019s truths.\u00a0 Whether that number will be so high as to prevent action against the President, it\u2019s hard to know.\u00a0 But what we do know is that the President is doing everything he can to bolster that group, \u00a0by making the press the \u201cenemy of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American people have good common sense;\u201d that\u2019s what Chet Huntley said as he left the NBC Huntley-Brinkley report for the last time in 1970.\u00a0 It was a time of crisis and tumult too, Vietnam and Civil Rights and Nixon as President.\u00a0 We will need all of the \u201cgood common sense\u201d we can muster in the next several months. \u00a0I believe America will find it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Enemy of the People The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it\u2019s TRUE. I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick! … Continue reading “Enemy of the People”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEnemy of the People : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/08\/05\/enemy-of-the-people\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Enemy of the People : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Enemy of the People The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it\u2019s TRUE. 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