In the wake of attempted bombing attacks on people he has criticized, the President is blaming the media for poisonous political rhetoric. He needs to look in
Even as law enforcement continues to search for the person or persons responsible for sending explosive devices to prominent people on the left that were discovered yesterday and again this morning, President Trump turned his fire on the media, which he claims is responsible for negative rhetoric that may have motivated the bomber:
MOSINEE, Wis. — A day after a national call for unity in the wake of the bomb scares targeting several prominent Democrats, President Trump blamed the “Mainstream Media” and “Fake News” for the anger and division thriving in the United States.
“It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description,” Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post on Thursday morning. “Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”
Mr. Trump did not mention in his tweet that CNN, which is one of his favorite news media punching bags, was among the targets of a pipe bomb.
The president’s somber plea on Wednesday — “We have to unify” — morphed into familiar attacks on the media and has echoes of his previous short-lived roles as console r in chief.
Mr. Trump has called for unity after mass shootings and other politically poisonous tragedies that have punctuated his time in office.
He does not seem to follow his own advice for long.
So it went on Wednesday evening, when Mr. Trump appeared to revert to partisanship as usual, just in a softer tone of voice. Here in Wisconsin, he embarked on his 38th campaign rally since assuming the presidency with a bit of rhetorical jujitsu, managing to weave jabs at the news media and Democrats into an opening call for Americans to “come together in peace and harmony.”
“We should not mob people in public spaces or destroy public property,” Mr. Trump said in a thinly veiled reference to his latest turn of phrase — “ jobs not mobs ” — and a castigation of how liberals reacted to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s battle to be confirmed to the Supreme Court amid multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.
The president flicked at a suggestion popularized by liberals and some members of the news media who have suggested his nationalist views are akin to Adolf Hitler’s: “No one should carelessly compare political opponents to historical villains.”
Trump’s Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, picked up on Trump’s rhetoric this morning on Fox News Channel:
On Fox and Friends on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders spoke about President Trump’s rally last night and the many devices and suspicious packages mailed to prominent administration critics and foes this week. Sanders said that the media is partly to blame for the events.
Host Brian Kilmeade first noted that there were additional targets, including Robert de Niro and Joe Biden, noting both are critics of Trump, and co-host Steve Doocy brought up the President’s tweet from this morning in which he placed blame on “fake news.”
Sanders first replied to Kilmeade that the administration condemns “violence in all forms”, calling the situation a “despicable act”. She answered Doocy by agreeing with the President.
“Certainly the media has a role to play in this process,” she said. “When 90% of the coverage about this president is negative, despite the historic successes, when ideas are perpetuated and continued of negativity that is not helpful for the American discourse. And Certainly the president is calling on everyone to come together and if you have a problem with one another, let’s voice that but let’s do so peacefully and let’s do that at the ballot box.”
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt then brought up the shooting of Republicans at a softball game just over a year ago in a politically motivated attack by a man who hated Trump and the GOP, as well as the incidents of enraged citizens confronting administration officials with their families in restaurants.
“We saw what happened to Steve Scalise where he was shot. We saw what happened to you and your family in the restaurant. We have Maxine waters that is calling for people to get into the face of folks in the administration they don’t agree with. Hillary Clinton says we won’t be civil until Democrats are in power,” said Earhardt. “Not just saying it is Democrats but it is on both sides but is this a good reminder to us we all need to take a step back? We can disagree about politics, but is this pretty scary to you, we’re seeing more and more violence and threats?”
“Absolutely,” said Sanders. “As the president said yesterday, political violence has no place in our country, and it is certainly something that we won’t tolerate, we won’t stand we’ll continue to condemn it.”
These comments are absurd, irresponsible, and completely ignore the role that the President himself has played in poisoning political rhetoric in this country over the course of the past three years since he became a candidate for President. This is the same man who has referred to the press as the “enemy of the people” on many occasions. On other occasions, both he and members of his Administration have suggested that the media should be criminally charged for publishing leaked information even when that information isn’t classified. At a rally in Arizona last year, Trump upped his anti-media rhetoric by referring to members of the media as ”sick people” who “don’t like our country,” and who are “trying to take away our history and our heritage.” Recently, Trump admitted that when he said that when he refers to “Fake News” he means any news coverage that is critical of him or his Administration regardless of whether it’s true or not. Finally, the President has admitted that the purpose behind all of these attacks on the media is quite simple in that it is aimed at discrediting the media in the minds of his supporters so that they won’t believe any of the bad news that is reported about his or his Administration.
In addition to attacking the press, the President has also regularly attacked his political and cultural critics both on his Twitter account and in his campaign speeches and comments to reporters. Throughout the campaign and throughout his Presidency, this President has unleashed his rhetoric against Mexicans, Muslims, disabled people, a Federal District Court Judge who happened to be Mexican-American and a Gold Star Family who happened to be Muslim. In response to N. F. L. players who were peacefully kneeling to protest racially biased police violence, he responded by calling the largely African-American players “sons of bitches.” Trump has also repeatedly attacked by name each of the individuals who have so far been the target of the explosive devices whose origins we still aren’t clear about as well as other prominent Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren, Kristen Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, and others. No doubt, law enforcement is checking in with these individuals and others to determine if they too may have been targets of a bomber or bombers who clearly seems to be working off a list that, at least in part, seems to come directly from the President himself.
Additionally, Trump has encouraged violence from his supporters, basked in their attacks on the media at his rallies, and encouraged his supporters to change slogans such as “Lock her up!” at his campaign rallies, a reference usually directed at his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton. Just last week Trump praised Congressman Greg Gianforte of Montana for his attack last year on a reporter for The Guardian who was trying to ask him a question about health care. Gianforte was charged with assault and ultimately pled guilty to that charge, but that didn’t stop the crowd that gathered to hear from Trump last week in Montana from cheering wildly when Trump praised Gianforte for the attack. After the events in Charlottesville last year that led to the death of a young woman at the hands of a white supremacist, Trump blamed ‘both sides’ for the violence, referred to the participants in the rally as “very fine people,” and refused to directly condemn groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, which was present at the rally, or the broader so-called alt-right movement whose supporters made up the vast majority of the participants. Days later Trump repeated his ‘both sides’ argument in a press conference at Trump Tower in New York and then repeated it again a month later in the wake of a meeting purportedly intended to discuss race with Republican Senator Tim Scott, the only African-American Republican in the Senate. A year later, his comments about those events showed that he still didn’t understand why his initial response was so wrong.
It’s also worth noting that there have been plenty of examples of poisonous rhetoric and dangerous reactions on the other side of the aisle.
