General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRobert Reich Rant --
http://robertreich.org/post/169632080345Straight Talk About Trump
FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 2018
Now that Trump has been president for almost a year, its time the media called his behavior for what it is rather than try to normalize it. Here are the six most misleading media euphemisms for conduct unbecoming a president:
1. Calling Trumps tweets presidential statements or press releases. The President is the President of the United States, so theyre considered official statements by the President of the United States, Trumps first press secretary, Sean Spicer, said last June when asked during his daily briefing how his tweets should be characterized
Wrong. Trumps tweets are mostly rants off the top of his head many of them wild, inconsistent, rude, crude, and bizarre.
Normal presidential statements are products of careful thought. Advisers weigh in. Consequences are considered. Alternatives are deliberated. Which is why such statements are considered important indicators of public policy, domestically and internationally.
Trumps tweet storms are relevant only to judging his mood on a particular day at a particular time.
2. Referring to Mar-A-Lago as the Winter White House. The White House says the term is accurate because Trump does official business from there, and, besides, Mar-A-Lagos former owner wanted the Palm Beach estate to become a presidential retreat.
Rubbish. Unlike the White House and Camp David, the traditional presidential retreat, both of which are owned by taxpayers, Mar-a-Lago is a profit-making business owned by Trump.
The White House is open for public tours; Mar-a-Lago is open only to members who can pay $200,000 to join.
Mar-a-Lago, along with the other Trump resort properties that he visits regularly, constitute a massive conflict of interest. Every visit promotes the Trump resort brand, adding directly to Trumps wealth.
Normal presidents dont make money off the presidency. Trump does. His resorts should be called what they are Trumps businesses.
3. Calling his lies false claims or comments that have proved to be inaccurate. Baloney. Theyre lies, plain and simple.
Early last year the Wall Street Journals editor-in-chief insisted that the Journal wouldnt label Trumps false statements as lies. Lying, said the editor, requires a deliberate intention to mislead, which couldnt be proven in Trumps case.
Last fall, NPRs then news director, Michael Oreskes defended NPRs refusal to use the term liar when describing Trump, explaining that the word constitutes an angry tone of editorializing that confirms opinions.
In January, Maggie Haberman, a leading Times political reporter, claimed that her job was showing when something untrue is said. Our job is not to say lied.
Wrong. Normal presidents may exaggerate; some occasionally lie. But Trump has taken lying to an entirely new level. He lies like other people breath. Almost nothing that comes out of his mouth can assumed to be true.
For Trump, lying is part of his overall strategy, his MO, and his pathology. Not to call them lies, or to deem him a liar, is itself misleading.
4. Referring to Trumps and his aides possible cooperation or coordination with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.
This wont due. Cooperation and coordination sound as if Trump and his campaign assistants were merely being polite to the Russians, engaged in a kind of innocent parallel play.
But nothing about what weve seen and heard so far suggests politeness or innocence. Collusion is the proper word, suggesting complicity in a conspiracy.
If true if Trump or his aides did collude with the Russians to throw the election his way they were engaged in treason, another important word that rarely appears in news reports.
5. Calling Trumps and Paul Ryans next move welfare reform, as in Trump has suggested more than once that welfare reform might be the next big legislative item on his agenda.
Rubbish. Theyre not going after welfare. Welfare federal public assistance to the poor was gutted in 1996. Trump and Ryan are aiming at Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Nor are they seeking to reform these programs. They want to cut them in order to pay for the huge tax cut theyve given corporations and the wealthy. Were going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, Ryan said recently, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.
So call it what it is: Planned cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
6. Describing Trumps comments as racially charged. Racially charged sounds like Trump doesnt intend them to be racist but some people hear them that way. Rubbish.
Trumps recent harangue against immigrants from shitholes in Latin America and Africa comes only weeks after The New York Timesreported that at another Oval Office meeting Trump said Haitian immigrants all have AIDS and that Nigerians who visit the US would never go back to their huts.
This is the man who built his political career on the racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Africa, who launched his presidential campaign with racist comments about Mexican immigrants, who saw fine people on both sides in the Charlottesville march of white supremacists, and who attacked African-American football players for being unpatriotic because they kneeled during the National Anthem to protest police discrimination.
This is the same man who in 1989 took out full page ads in New York newspapers demanding the return of the death penalty so it could be applied to five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park and who still refuses to admit his error even though they were exonerated by DNA evidence.
Stop using terms like racially charged to describe his statements. Face it. Trump is a racist, and his comments are racist.
Words matter. Its important to describe Trump accurately. Every American must understand who we have as president.
k8conant
(3,030 posts)He is right.
DemocracyMouse
(2,275 posts)He's actually making some reasonable points. Just as we must call a liar a liar, we must stop calling intellectuals "ranters'".
k8conant
(3,030 posts)I meant to say "Reich is right" and I meant "Rant on" facetiously. My apologies.
kentuck
(111,110 posts)...this is beyond his normal "reasonableness". Intellectuals have the right to rant sometimes, I guess?
DemocracyMouse
(2,275 posts)Reich is rolling too, although he's still honing his medium.... he's getting there!
Ranting is an interesting word and can be a force for change. But it can also be a force for talk radio to repress change.... what to do? Return to Victorian etiquette?
spanone
(135,877 posts)he's insane. plain & simple.
a crude, hateful, mean, insane 'president'
malaise
(269,161 posts)mnhtnbb
(31,404 posts)and a despicable excuse for a human being. He has no soul, no compassion. And for the sake of the country he needs to be removed from office NOW. Then we, the people, need to vote out as many Republicans as possible in November, so that the newly elected Dems can join with returning Dems to go about undoing all the damage that has been done by the Republican party during the Trump regime.
Eyeball_Kid
(7,434 posts)notdarkyet
(2,226 posts)Public speaking skills. Critical thinking and public speaking are important in life. I cant stand to hear one word from this man.
BSdetect
(8,999 posts)They fail to deal with drumph in so many ways.
ProudProgressiveNow
(6,129 posts)BigmanPigman
(51,627 posts)Whenever I watch and listen to him speak in any environment/platform he leaves me in awe. I respect and admire him more than almost everyone else in politics. He is brilliant, engaging, polite, and succinct. I like his illustrations when he puts out a video to explain complex issues too.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)Seems it was "good for business."
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Spot on!
TNNurse
(6,929 posts)He does not like the book and newspaper and magazines and the internet when people criticize him.
Wouldn't his tweet rants be subject to "tougher libel laws"???
Martin Eden
(12,875 posts)... in the face of LIES.
FakeNoose
(32,766 posts)Thanks for the great post Kentuck.
Just asking, aren't we supposed to limit the number of paragraphs to 4, from the source? As long as the link is provided, and you do have the link, then it shouldn't be necessary to quote more than 4 paragraphs. I do plan to go back and read the rest of this!
mercuryblues
(14,537 posts)they are presidential statements. Just because trump chooses to use his voice to rant and rave like a lunatic doesn't mean they aren't. It means the president is a lunatic that does nothing but rant and rave.
They should be taken seriously, to show just how fucking off the wall he is and should be trusted with the nuclear football.
MadCrow
(155 posts)is what they are. However, they do not live up to my idea of what "presidential" implies. But we need to save them for posterity so future generations will know what kind of threat our American democracy faced from this man's words and actions. I just pray that future generations will look on this presidency as an aberration, and not a new norm.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)vkkv
(3,384 posts)Anyone else find that strange ?
"This wont due. Cooperation and coordination sound as if Trump and his campaign assistants were merely being polite to the Russians, engaged in a kind of innocent parallel play. "
ROBERT REICH ROCKS !!!!!
ALWAYS HAS...