Saturday, January 14, 2017

Media’s down one score in First Amendment Bowl

Newt Gingrich, that standard bearer for high moral values in America, thinks alt-President Donald Trump should “suspend” CNN reporter Jim Acosta, who had the courage to go toe-to-toe with Trump during a press conference on January 11.

Sean Spicer, incoming press secretary, was happy to pile on, claiming that Acosta verbally attacked the President of the United States.

I believe it’s time for the news media to band together and stand up to the incoming president before it’s too late. The media is already down one score in this battle for the First Amendment and can’t afford to get further behind an obnoxious bully standing behind the world’s greatest bully pulpit.

"In baseball, hockey, basketball, if certain players behave inappropriately, you kick them out of the game," Gingrich told his errand boy Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel. "I think the way Acosta behaved for CNN, have him suspended for 60 days. Send someone else," Gingrich said.

Other reporters should be sent a message there are limits, he continued. "When you get beyond those limits, you ain't going to be there. They shouldn't put up with this. It's bad for the country."

First off, are you freakin’ kidding me? For the past year and a half, Donald J. Trump has verbally assaulted virtually anybody within the sound of his voice. That includes Mexicans, Muslims, African Americans, women, members of the military, a Gold Star mother, the news media, Congress, the intelligence community, peaceful protesters, Wall Street, liberals, Democrats, President Obama, Michelle Obama, anyone named Clinton and the 17 other Republicans who ran for president.

And he has the balls to be offended now when someone does it to him?

Second, here’s some breaking news for Sean Spicer – Trump is not the President of the United States for another five days.

If you saw the news conference, you know that Trump opened up by calling out CNN for reporting “fake news,” and then refused to recognize Acosta when he tried to ask a question. This is setting a dangerous precedent under which Trump will never have to answer a question he doesn’t like. He’ll just “suspend” reporters one at a time until there is no one left to make him accountable for the decisions he makes as president.

He’s not even in office yet and Trump is already taking the First Amendment and grinding it up under his heel, and the worst part is, the media is letting him get away with it. For my money, I don’t know why the rest of the reporters in the room didn’t get up and walk out the second that Trump shook his finger in Acosta’s face and said, “I’m not going to give you a question.”

Trump is nothing if not a creation of the news media. He’s the monster to their Dr. Frankenstein. They built him in the lab during the long campaign by giving him hours of free air time to ramble on at rallies unedited and uncut, and then appeared shocked when their monster got loose and started pillaging the countryside and killing sheep.

I’d suggest the reporters who cover Trump need to get organized, find a way to cover each other’s backs and stop trying to “normalize” the alt-president. He may love to discredit the media, but he’d be nothing without them. The reporters who cover the White House are going to have to stand together or they are all going to fall separately until there is nothing left but Twitter rants from Trump’s golden realm.

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