The Patriot Post® · Trump and MSM Derangement
It may be a new year, but it’s already feeling like a 2017 reboot. To the chagrin of the Left and mainstream media Donald Trump is still president. The latest MSM sky-is-falling freak-out over Trump is a repeat of an old and regularly applied leftist tactic: Question the man’s mental stability and ability. Both presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush where blasted with the same accusations of incompetence. The difference is they both took it in stride and refused to dignify the ludicrous narrative, largely ignoring such media commentary for the foolish gossip it was.
But for good and ill, Trump is neither Bush nor Reagan. From the very start, he has declared war against “fake news,” and his chosen weapon to circumvent the MSM spin has been his Twitter account, where he regularly calls out by name both networks and reporters he sees as engaging in biased reporting. Just last week, he announced that he soon would be giving out awards for “the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media.”
And like last year, the MSM has doubled down refusing to back off its anti-Trump agenda. Touting the pending tell-all book by Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, the MSM has resurrected its 25th Amendment narrative, suggesting that Trump is not mentally stable and therefore should be forcibly removed from office.
Trump responded via his usual outlet, tweeting, “Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.” Trump continued, “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. … I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star… to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!”
This battle might also be the reason Trump has come out so hard against his former adviser, Steve Bannon. In order to fully delegitimize Wolff’s book, Trump has taken apart both Bannon’s role in his administration as well as Bannon’s influence upon his presidency. Trump’s tweet last Friday says as much: “Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too Bad!”
It’s probably safe to say that we shouldn’t expect any easing of tensions between Trump and the Leftmedia. As Barack Obama once opined, this is the “new normal.”
Finally, regarding the MSM’s suggestion that Trump is somehow mentally unstable, Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist noted, “Trump is unlike any previous president of the United States. Voters knew this when they chose him over Hillary Clinton. And there is nothing about Trump now that suggests his mental state is any different or worse or dangerous than when voters elected him, or when they first encountered him on gossip pages and in reality television decades ago.” In other words, Trump is as he always has been, and America knows it.