Pro tip for you mainstream, dinosaur journos: If you're going to play innocent victim vis-a-vis a president who constantly rips you as fake, phony and untrustworthy, you might want to avoid publishing clearly demonstrated falsehoods. Try if you want to insist CNN's sins have to do with no one but CNN, but President Trump knows perfectly well that these are pack animals. They all think the same way. They all use the same reporting techniques. They all cut the same corners.
And they all have the same agenda, which is why they have each other's backs, and why none of the rest of them are making too much noise about what CNN got caught doing. All the rest of them know that could just as easily be them tomorrow, and Trump knows it too:
So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!
A conventional thinker would tell you Trump has once again overplayed a good hand. CNN is harder on him than anyone in the media, and he's got them dead to rights. Put the focus on CNN and its irresponsibility, and no one can really take issue. But no. Not Trump. He has to expand it to the rest of the media too, even though they haven't been caught doing anything wrong.
In case you hadn't noticed, Trump doesn't do anything conventionally. He knows that when something rotten is going on, you don't have to necessarily be able to prove it in a court-of-law, preponderance-of-the-evidence sort of way. You simply put it out there and put them on the defensive. That's what they do to him all the time, isn't it?
The rest of the fake news media will be beside themselves trying to play victim in response to Trump's tweet, but it's getting harder and harder for any of them to defend that stance. People are figuring out that the Russia story is nonsense, and they're getting tired of the media trying to beat this horse while more important matters that are relevant to real people's lives need attention.
I for one am happy as can be that we finally have a Republican president who doesn't try to pretend the media are just honest professionals trying to do their jobs. They haven't been that for a very long time. Even in the days of Reagan that's not what they were. They've always been liberal activists hiding behind their alleged objectivity, and it's time we had a president who called them out for it.
And Trump is right: The rest of them are just as fake as CNN. They just weren't the ones who got caught. At least not yet.
Pro tip for you mainstream, dinosaur journos: If you're going to play innocent victim vis-a-vis a president who constantly rips you as fake, phony and untrustworthy, you might want to avoid publishing clearly demonstrated falsehoods. Try if you want to insist CNN's sins have to do with no one but CNN, but President Trump knows perfectly well that these are pack animals. They all think the same way. They all use the same reporting techniques. They all cut the same corners.
And they all have the same agenda, which is why they have each other's backs, and why none of the rest of them are making too much noise about what CNN got caught doing. All the rest of them know that could just as easily be them tomorrow, and Trump knows it too:
