The Patriot Post® · Memo to Trump: Stop Swapping Spit With Jackasses!
In an off-the-record remark to his adoring media on an Air Force One junket two years ago, Barack Obama summarized his foreign policy: “Don’t do stupid sh-t.” Unfortunately, everything Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did amounted to “stupid sh-t.”
There is a lesson here for Donald Trump – if he wants to implement his admirable domestic and foreign policies, he is going to have to stop tweeting “stupid sh-t.” Trump has established an unfortunate record of derailing political momentum and undermining political capital with his seemingly-obsessive and mindless tweets.
For the eight years Donald Trump hosted his successful reality TV show, he had complete control over the script. But in actual reality, as president, the Leftmedia talkingheads are well versed in promulgating their own narrative and it can be a lot louder than Trump Tweets. When these two competing forces meet, there is inevitable conflict. Unfortunately, these conflicts between Trump and the mainstream media continue to erupt over petty tussles, diverting political capital from much more important issues.
The latest example of this tug of war was the contested claims about the size of the inaugural crowd. There is little doubt that the Leftmedia’s intent in this debate was to belittle Trump and bait him into a response, which they received. And the Trump administration’s “alternative facts” and suggestions that photographs of the inaugural crowd were intended to “lessen the enthusiasm” and were “shameful and wrong” only succeeded in turning a molehill into a mountain.
Trump’s White House spokesman Sean Spicer burned up half of his first press briefing Saturday defending attendance numbers, including this questionable assertion: “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.”
Now, as it pertains to turnout for inaugurals, in 2012, Barack Obama won 91% of the vote in Washington, DC, and mass majorities in surrounding government bureaucrat bedroom communities in Maryland and Virginia. Notably, Hillary Clinton also won 91% in 2016. It was easy for millions of Obamaphiles to commute to the National Mall for his coronation, and just as easy for hundreds of thousands of local libs to converge on DC to protest the Trump inaugural.
Meanwhile, most of Trump’s voters are much more evenly spread across the nation. Of course, the mainstream media ignored this rather significant detail in their reporting.
But the point is, Trump and his spokespeople must stop engaging in petulant and sophomoric molehill battles with media, celebrities and even his fellow Republicans. Throwing out “alternative facts” does not “win” the argument, nor does it expose the genuine media bias, like fake news claims that a bust of Martin Luther King had been removed from the Oval Office.
Spicer would have won the day responding to the question of attendance with 15 words instead of 500: “There were far more people here for Donald Trump’s inaugural events than for Hillary Clinton’s!” Or he could have taken the tack of Kellyanne Conway, who opined, “I don’t think ultimately presidents are judged by crowd sizes at their inauguration. I think they are judged by their accomplishments.”
The ancient wisdom of Proverbs 26:4 warns, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.” Trump’s eagerness to challenge Leftmedia bias and “fake news” resonates only when it does not propagate “alternative facts” that are demonstrably false. And, being that Trump is now president and no longer a candidate or a reality TV star, diverting from much more important issues by engaging in petty molehill battles is a costly unforced error.