by Dee McLachlan
There were several articles in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and The Herald Sun today about President Donald Trump’s 80 minute press conference. The mainstream media reports describe it as “rambling.” In the SMH:
“President Donald Trump’s combative news conference on Thursday afternoon left some people speechless.”
The mainstream media is stunned by so much opinion from a President. They have been trained to accept the staged and “scripted” press conferences.
NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers had this to say about Trump’s press conference:
“The Trump administration has been roiled by chaos, and today Trump doubled down on that chaos by holding a bizarre press conference full of false claims, grievances and attacks on the media… and then Donald Trump held what can only be described as a bats– crazy press conference that rendered this script [his show] completely meaningless…”
The President began the press conference by announcing his nominee for secretary of the Department of Labor at the press conference — Mr. Alex Acosta.
Then he continued on to skewer the media. This extract from the transcript (sourced from the New York Times) is abbreviated (for the record):
“TRUMP: Unfortunately, much of the media in Washington, D.C., along with New York, Los Angeles in particular, speaks not for the people, but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system. The press has become so dishonest that if we don’t talk about, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice…
I am here to change the broken system…
To be honest, I inherited a mess. It’s a mess.
The Middle East is a disaster. North Korea — we’ll take care of it folks…
On foreign affairs, we’ve already begun enormously productive talks with many foreign leaders
We’ve even developed a new council with Canada to promote women’s business leaders and entrepreneurs.
Secretary Mattis… [is] now working very hard to submit a plan for the defeat of ISIS… They’ve spread like cancer. ISIS has spread like cancer — another mess I inherited.
And we have imposed new sanctions on the nation of Iran…
I’ve ordered plan to begin building for the massive rebuilding of the United States military… We’ve pursued this rebuilding in the hopes that we will never have to use this military…. it’s depleted — it won’t be depleted for long.
We have to have a strong law enforcement also. So we do not go abroad in the search of war, we really are searching for peace…
…I’ve been talking about for a year and a half, strong borders.
I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan [No, but surprise win — yes]
We’ve withdrawn from the job-killing disaster known as Trans Pacific Partnership. We’re going to have one on one deals.
We’ve directed the elimination of regulations that undermine manufacturing and call for expedited approval of the permits needed for America and American infrastructure…
We want plants built and we want factories built and we want the jobs.
We’ve imposed a hiring freeze on nonessential federal workers.
We’ve imposed a temporary moratorium on new federal regulations.
We’ve issued a game-changing new rule that says for each one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated.
We’ve stood up for the men and women of law enforcement, directing federal agencies to ensure they are protected from crimes of violence.
We’ve ordered the Department of Homeland Security and Justice to coordinate on a plan to destroy criminal cartels coming into the United States with drugs.
We’ve undertaken the most substantial border security measures in a generation to keep our nation and our tax dollars safe.
We’ve ordered a crackdown on sanctuary cities that refuse to comply with federal law and that harbor criminal aliens…
We have taken decisive action to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country.
We’re issuing a new executive action next week that will comprehensively protect our country.
We have also taken steps to begin construction of the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access Pipelines. Thousands and thousands of jobs…
I’ve started by imposing a five-year lobbying ban on White House officials and a lifetime ban on lobbying for a foreign government.
We’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare. Obamacare is a disaster…
…and are deep in the midst of negotiations on a very historic tax reform to bring our jobs back, to bring our jobs back to this country.
I’ve also worked to install a cabinet over the delays and obstruction of Senate Democrats… Among their responsibilities will be ending the bleeding of jobs from our country and negotiating fair trade deals for our citizens.
Jobs have already started to surge. …Ford announced it will abandon its plans to build a new factory in Mexico, and will instead invest $700 million in Michigan… Fiat Chrysler announced it will invest $1 billion in Ohio and Michigan. General Motors likewise committed to invest billions of dollars in its American manufacturing operation…
Intel… with a new plant in Arizona… will result in at least 10,000 American jobs. Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs…
Other countries have been taking advantage of us for decades…
I have kept my promise to the American people by nominating a justice of the United States Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch…
Some very big things are going to be announced next week.”
This political shopping list does not seem like a ramble to me. Then he answered questions:
To a question regarding Russia, he had this to say about the mainstream media:
“It’s all fake news. It’s all fake news. The nice thing is, I see it starting to turn, where people are now looking at the illegal — I think it’s very important — the illegal, giving out classified information.
“I’ll give you an example. I called, as you know, Mexico. It was a very, very confidential, classified call… All of a sudden, it’s out there for the world to see. It’s supposed to be secret.
“Same thing with Australia.”
Then later:
“Same thing with Australia. I said “that’s terrible that it was leaked” but it wasn’t that important. But then I said to myself “what happens when I’m dealing with the problem of North Korea?”
The questions do go on… and on. But how refreshing. Not the usual scripted and abbreviated nonsense that has been the standard of past decades.
We wait to see how Trump performs. But what he has done so far is to turn the epithet “fake news” back on the mainstream media. This could not have been done from any position, other than the most powerful position in the world.
Photo credit: newsmax.com
The basic battle is between NATIONALISM vs INTERNATIONALISM – and we now live in interesting times………..
Let my people go… the Ruritanians. Yay!
There is a new Sheriff in town
You asked for it, Dee.
.
A good idea would be to ask each of our pollies if they are globalists or nationalists and see if they can give a yes or no answer.
I got all of the following from TheHill.com and believe it’s accurate:
President Trump blasted the media as “the enemy of the American people” in a tweet Friday, calling out several outlets specifically.
“The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” he wrote.
He had posted and then quickly deleted a slightly different version of the tweet just a few minutes earlier, which omitted ABC and CBS. He also included the word “SICK!” at the end of the original post.
The tweet came one day after Trump held an adversarial and lengthy news conference, in which he berated the media as “very fake news” and dismissed news reports about his and his associates’ ties to Russia as a “ruse.”
Did he have (sic) ? in the tweet
Good question. Sorry I don’t know. Probably you are right, Dee.
I can think of another caption for that photo of the press conference:
“There are many child killers and child eaters in Washington. Raise hands any journalist willing to name names. I will invite you to Trump Tower for a tete a tete.”