Trump Check

A Dangerous Strategy

By News & Guts
Welcome

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Like a dead skunk in the road, we tried to pass without mentioning this, but the aroma was too strong.

Let’s talk about what’s really going on.  Donald Trump doesn’t hate the media. It’s his oxygen.  He couldn’t survive without the attention. This is a strategy, a dangerous strategy, a poorly conceived strategy but a strategy nonetheless.  It’s for a president grasping at anything that will motivate his supporters.  Eight days before a midterm election that will be as much a referendum on him as any candidate actually on the ballot, Donald Trump is losing.  Or, every respected poll is wrong.  Look at his upcoming campaign schedule. Trump has 11 campaign rallies in the next week.
From Axios’ Jonathan Swan:

“In his final blitz, Trump is going to Trump country within Trump states. Not a single competitive House seat lies within these locations. 

“The Cook Political Report’s elections analyst Amy Walter told me the schedule, developed by White House Political Director Bill Stepien, is a “very strategically smart tour” and also appears to her to basically “concede the House.”

The only thing left is to expand the GOP majority in the Senate.

As for journalists, many have taken the bait this morning and restated the obvious.  If it would make us safer, then we should counter his “enemy of the people” nonsense. But it won’t.  Donald Trump didn’t think through this madness.  He lives for the moment and for the man in the mirror.  As we have witnessed countless times over the last two years, he is  incapable of showing compassion and remorse.  It’s not in his DNA. Watching him read someone else’s words from a TelePrompTer is just creepy. You know he doesn’t think or believe what he’s saying.
Frankly, the bigger problem is Fox News, where the propaganda is spewed nonstop.  Jonathan Bernstein writes in Bloomberg Opinion:
“…And the truth is that people who watch the news within the Republican-aligned media, and listen to Republican politicians including the president of the United States, are being fed a nonstop diet of crazy conspiracy theories and phony scare stories. 
“…And a lot of people believe that those crazy conspiracy theories and phony scare stories are true. Why wouldn’t they? Most of us grew up in a media atmosphere in which programs that looked like the news mostly told the truth. We didn’t all grow up believing that presidents told the truth, of course, but we’ve never had a president who has such a total disregard for the truth.”
So, one week to go.  Much could change after November 6.  In the meantime, we pray for our colleagues who now fear for their safety.