Why 'Fake News' is the greatest trick Trump ever pulled off 🪄
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1. Donald Trump ❤️‘s the Media
To be a journalist at a Donald Trump rally is to feel like the worst person in the world. People give you the finger. They tell you to “fuck off.”
They have, of course, never really met you. Or, probably, any journalist. But they have been fed — for the past decade — a steady stream of rhetoric from Donald Trump (and Fox News!) that the media is a bunch of liars. That they are, to borrow Trump’s now-iconic phrase, “fake news.”
What I find so funny — in a laugh-to-keep-from-crying way — is that Trump doesn’t believe it. Not a word. In fact, there has NEVER been a president, in the post World War II era, who cared nearly as much about his coverage in the mainstream media as Trump. (Richard Nixon is the only one who comes close.)
Consider Trump’s past few days.
He sat down in the Oval Office for an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. The same Jeffrey Goldberg who broke the biggest — and most damaging — story of Trump’s first 100 days. The same Jeffrey Goldberg who reported back in 2020 that Trump had called American soldiers killed in action “suckers” and losers.”
Days later, he was chatting with ABC’s Terry Moran in an extended interview.
And now, late Thursday, we got word that Trump will do “Meet the Press” — the living, breathing definition of mainstream media — this Sunday.
Does that seem like the schedule of a president who thinks the mainstream media is “fake” and impotent? It does not.
So, what gives?
