It is no secret that Donald Trump uses twitter to get his version of the truth out whenever any bit of information reflects him in a negative fashion. With so much discussion of Trump’s actions and history as time continues closer and closer to inauguration day, the president-elect’s twitter has been aflame.
Since the start of the new year Trump has been actively defending himself against the so-called false media. On January second Trump tweeted about media being false about how the final weeks of the election played out. According to Trump, media stated that he thought he would lose the election. This was a very harmless claim in the swing of things. It is not as if there would be a big uproar because Trump previously thought he would lose, and especially since he won the election. This information is arbitrary at best and is par for the course when a new president is elected. However, Donald Trump took arms on Twitter and continued with his famous “wrong,” to disprove the supposed doubt.
Trump’s disapproval of the media continues even further as he calls any negative media surrounding him “attacks” and any negative media surrounding the democratic party “the truth." When the media stops reporting on issues within Trump’s political moves it is because “nobody cares anymore” now that he will be president. Yet, when the media stops reporting on an issue with Hillary Clinton’s actions it is because the media is giving them a pass. Now as a disclaimer, I do not believe either side is innocent, but I do believe that it is important to call out hypocrisy and childishness in our future president.
In the big picture, Hillary Clinton’s choices in her campaign will affect our country far less than how Donald Trump behaves in office. To further the matter, this is not the first time that Trump has discredited the media only when it is a negative reflection of himself. In fact, when Barack Obama was president, Donald Trump strongly pushed the media to cover a false report that Obama had no birth certificate. Yet when the media questions a legitimate issue around Trump, his response is always that the media is fake.
In fact, for five days in a row Trump called out the media who reported against him. On the eighth of January he states, “Media is fake!”; the ninth, “Just more very dishonest media!”; on the tenth the tweet eloquently states, “FAKE NEWS- A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!”; on the eleventh, “... and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS.”; and finally on the twelfth, “@CNN is in a total meltdown with their FAKE NEWS”. The Twitter-temper-tantrum was topped by another tweet on January 11th when Donald Trump stated, “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to 'leak' into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”. The claim lacks any sensitivity to the horrible nature of Nazi Germany and has been called a bizarre response by many Twitter users. Many have called him out about the insensitivity to a horrible historical event. Trump supporters state that it is a similar response to those who have compared Trump to Hitler. Once again, it is a question of what is an appropriate response from different positions. While it is just as insensitive to compare Trump to Hitler, these people do not hold any influence over the state of a country. Donald Trump’s bad press is nowhere near the atrocities of the Holocaust and the Nazi propaganda against minorities.
The only press that is true is what is coming from Donald Trump’s mouth directly. This previous week Meryl Streep called for journalists to report the truth as the year moves on. The truth however, In Trump’s eyes, is not the truth that Streep was calling for. During the speech Streep stated her disgust in Trump’s imitation of a disabled reporter. Trump has denied this act multiple times saying that is is just another claim by the false media, but time and time again this video proves his claim wrong. While the video proves beyond a doubt that Trump mocked the disabled reporter, he called Streep, “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood” and “a Hillary flunky” who attacked him while she “doesn’t know him (me)”.
The first issue is that Trump assumes that all truthful critics and reporters will know him personally. This is simply not how the news works, especially since he is of such a high political power. The second issue is with the name calling. Nowhere in Streep’s speech was she disrespectful in her display of disapproval. Yet, our future president felt the need to name call and act in a derogatory nature, once again. While some say this is a strong will that will not take any grievance, there is a lack of diplomacy that one would expect from a president. There is a respectful way to deny and hold strong against insult, and Trump completely missed the mark. Yet the larger issue is that Trump should have no worries about journalists reporting the truth if he has nothing to hide. An eloquent and strong tweeted response from the President could have been support for a call to action about truthful press. Yet, he automatically assumes that the “truth” will be against him.
The question now is why he feels so defensive. If Trump’s issue with the “false” media is such a large issue then why does he not rally around support for the truth? Every president has had bad press from the opposing political view. Yet, our president-elect seems to feel this is special to him. If his willpower and shell to insult is as strong as he states, then there should be no issue brushing off the so called fake news. All signs point to that Trump has lost control of what the media finds out, and is desperately trying to deny all negative aspects of himself. However, instead of strengthening his public appearance this only makes people question what is truly false about him. If Donald Trump was to admit his mistakes and apologize than maybe people would be more willing to believe his denials.In the end, it takes a lot more strength to admit mistakes and apologize than to deny. If Donald Trump continues to deny reports that are indisputably true such as mocking a disabled reporter, there will only be more questions on how trustworthy his denials are.
