One of the Great Presidential Speeches

Dec. 21, 2022--President Volodymyr of Ukraine meets President Biden of the United States in White House. Image from the web site of Ukraine's president.

Did you catch the address to Congress by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on the darkest day of the year? Dec. 21, 2022, long after darkness fell for our longest night, wearing his trademark green shirt with the presidential symbol on it, Zelenskyy spoke movingly of the struggle his country faces.

I thought it was a speech for the ages, one that will be quoted and studied. Zelensky put the war his country is waging to defend against a Russian invasion in the context of the larger global struggle for democracy—imploring American to remember that aid to Ukraine is not charity, but an important investment in that ongoing struggle that we are a vital part of. (C-SPAN video of speech below, skip ahead to 19:00 when Zelensky enters and then starts speaking.)

And he powerfully evoked some American cultural milestones—the U.S. Army battling the last German offensive of World War II in the Battle of the Bulge; and the battle that helped turned the tide of the American Revolution, Saratoga.

It’s fitting, somehow, that Zelensky referenced the Battle of the Bugle because that battle was raging at this time of year. On Dec. 16, the Wehrmacht used the cover of poor winter weather (to avoid Allied air superiority) to launch an attack through the Ardennes.

The German offensive failed. Just as Russian forces failed to take Kiev last year, the Germans stalled in their drive to split Allied forces by marching to Antwerp.

In that case, the German offensive was a long shot, almost certainly doomed as Germany was running out of resources, particularly fuel. In the case of Ukraine, they are fighting a defensive war against a Russian army with vastly greater resources. Still, the Battle of the Bulge echoes in the American mind, and Zelensky was reminding us of some parallels.

In some ways, I think, the analogy to Saratoga was more apt. In fall of 1777, British forces launched a three-pronged offensive to divide the Americans by splitting New York. Gen. John Burgoyne brought one of those prongs south from Canada, capturing Fort Ticonderoga and sweeping south towards American forces dug in near Saratoga.

The British attacked twice, but the Americans defenders held them off. Faced with losses and being cut off from reinforcement, British General John Burgoyne surrendered to American General Horatio Gates on Oct. 17, 1777. Partly as a result of the battle (technically, I suppose, the battles) of Saratoga, France decided it was worthwhile to support the American cause as the Yanks had demonstrated they maybe could win. And the tide of war was turned.

19th Century painting by artist John Trumbull of General John Burgoyne surrendering to General Horatio Gates on Oct. 17, 1777. Painting in collection of Yale University, image from Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, the Russian army didn’t surrender to Ukraine when their invasion forces stalled on the road to Kiev this spring, but still, just as American defenders at Saratoga produced a turning point, Ukraine’s valiant defense of Kiev and offensive to push back in the east give hope to its cause.

As President Zelensky noted, the first Russian defeat was its loss in the psychological war. Most of the world, and most of the body politic in the United Sates, recognizes Russia as the aggressor here. Zelensky reminded us that his country needs continued support as the battle against Russian aggression continues.

It is, as he stated, a key moment in a global fight for democracy. And, Zelensky predicted, a fight that Ukraine will win. That seemed faint hope when Russian tanks trundled across the border this spring—many of us, I’m sure, expected Russia to crush Ukraine. It seems, like the Revolution post Saratoga, that Ukraine’s ultimate victory now is at least a possibility, should its allies show backbone and stay the course and support Ukraine's cause.

Ironically, Zelensky is a TV entertainer turned politician who has proven, in his country’s darkest hour, to be an effective leader. He’s an FDR or Winston Churchill, a great communicator who showed his ability before Congress to sound the right notes, to clarify the issues at state, to rally support.

Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, in March 2022. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

How different from a recent U.S. President who was a TV entertainer turned politician. Indeed, President Trump was impeached for the first time for a corrupt phone call in which he tried to hold aid to Ukraine hostage for political favors. Trump is the anti-Zelensky, a divider, not a uniter, a man who this week was exposed yet again for attempting to undermine American democracy.

I felt it was very weird when the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection recommended that the former President face criminal charges, and the reaction from Iowa’s Republicans was a yawn. We’ve moved on. We don’t care about Jan. 6 anymore. We’re working on the issues Iowans care about now.

How American. How forgetful we are as a people. It’s less than two years since an American president attempted a violent coup in Washington DC, and too many want to close that chapter and forget about it.

Well, if we don’t forget the Battle of the Bulge or Saratoga, it is way too early to turn the page from Jan. 6. After all, the chief villain in that sad narrative, Donald Jerk Trump, is a leading candidate for President in 2024—the leader of an attempt to subvert our very democratic system is in the running for his party’s nomination for president, and the craven, cowardly “leaders” of his party are too scared of him to note that he’s proven himself unqualified to support and defend our Constitution. I’m one Iowan who hasn’t yet moved on and is disgusted with the gutless Iowa Republicans who claim we should. I’ll move on when the GOP renounces Trumpism and Trump, as long ago they should have.

And this week we have the opposite end of the scoundrel spectrum. A true icon of democracy, President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling on us to remember who we are—we are the victors at Saratoga and The Bugle, a people who have fought for two centuries for the cause of self-government and democracy.

Today, that fight is happening in Ukraine. But also in the hearts of Americans. The dark cancer of Trumpism is still with us. The fight for democracy isn’t just happening in eastern Europe.

Saying Goodbye to ‘Reliable Sources’

From CNN.com, logo of "Reliable Sources," last episode was today, Aug. 21, 2022.

So, today was the final show, after 30 years, of CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” Ratings were not always great for this show, and CNN informed host Brian Stelter this week that it was ending the program with today’s episode.

I’ll miss it. Stelter showed class in the final show, ending it by thanking the boss who had fired him, noting that it’s rare for a news program to get a final episode to say goodbye. And he expressed hope that CNN would continue to push its news coverage.

“The free world needs a reliable source,” Stelter said of CNN.

CNN has new owners, and the corporation is shaking things up. One thrust of those changes is to try to emphasize straight news coverage, which is OK, but “Reliable Sources” was useful as a look at the media world. It wasn’t an “infotainment” show of just opinion commentary. While Stelter often made his own comments, at is heart, the show was an interview program and panel discussion about the media.

CNN image used on YouTube clip of Brian Stelter's final show.

Some of those guests, and Stelter, made key points during the final show:

It’s not a coincidence that democracy is on decline at the same time that independent news media is on the decline. “The pendulum swinging against democracy all over the world,” Carl Bernstein said. He noted that he and Bob Woodward, who 50 years ago uncovered the Watergate scandal as reporters for The Washington Post, understood that their job was to report “the best obtainable version of the truth.”

But, what truth? Journalists are not stenographers—using sound news judgement to frame events in context is also a key to what journalists need to do. As David Zurawick, a CNN analyst formerly with the Baltimore Sun noted, the current call to report “just the facts” ignores the reality that facts need context—that the body politic needs what he called “explanatory journalism,” such as the many times Carl Bernstein was able to compare action by former President Donald Trump to actions by Richard Nixon.

Zurawick also noted that, in the 30 years that "Reliable Sources" was on the air, local newspapers and local TV news have been on the decline.

Part of that decline is fueled by ownership changes—there always was an elitism problem in American journalism where it was typically rich families that owned media companies, but at least those families had some sense of responsibility that hedge funds lack.

Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg said that owning a media outlet is “not like owning a chicken restaurant or whatever. You have to be willing to stand up to authority.”

I agree. It’s good that in this social media era, rich owners can’t control the information anymore but it leaves media chasing the eyeballs at the expense of any sense of mission. And the impulse to report “straight” news can be a positive one, although the danger now seems to be a false equivalency where facts and nonsense are reported as equals.

Jodie Ginsberg, president of the Committee to Project Journalists noted that a true journalist doesn’t ask if it’s raining, they go outside to feel the rain. These days it’s harder to agree on “the importance of facts, the importance of agreeing on some fundamental, important information.”

“When those in power denigrate journalism, journalists become fair game,” she said.

The panelists and guests on the final episode, not all of whom I quote here, were insightful and interesting. It impressed me that, although lots of media and news trends are dark, the tone of the show was nonetheless hopeful.

And Stelter ended on a positive note. It was a classy way to go out. The CNN "Reliable Sources" newsletter continues for now, which is nice, but it’s still a sad day when a show that provided valuable context on the media stories of the week is suddenly gone.

Is Joe Biden Your President?

Official White House images of President Joe Biden (above) and Vice President Kamala Harris (below). In 2020, they won the election. Let's acknowledge that as a fact.

What a week! Who knew the contemporary Republican party could be so weird and vindictive that Democrats would feel a little sympathy for someone named Cheney?

In some ways, the odd Republican reaction to the election of 2020 parallels the reaction of liberals in 2016.

Remember the #notmypresident trend? That was a hot hashtag in 2017 when it became obvious Trump’s odd craziness during the 2016 campaign wasn’t a publicity stunt—Donald J. Trump was every bit as awful and delusional as president as he seemed to be when he was a candidate.

The campaign bombast was not a ploy—Trump immediately began governing in chaos, occupying his time on strange obsessions like the battle over the inaugural crowd size, and his insistence that his basically average Electoral College win (coupled with a popular vote loss) somehow was a historic landslide.

There was a sense of unreality on election day in 2016, that something unexpected had happened—and indeed it had. I recall hearing an acquaintance say shortly after that at a meeting that Trump “is not my president.” At the time, I was taken aback. Our republic rests on political opponents accepting election results and agreeing to fight another day.

President Donald Trump, the man who thinks he's still President. He's not. Accept it and move on.

Trump won. Not a clean nor decisive win, but under the rules, a win. Last year, Biden won, by the same Electoral College margin as Trump, and also, unlike Trump, in the popular vote—and yet there is again a new “not my president” idea in the air.

But the 2017 #notmypresident movement was fundamentally different from what we face today.

In 2016 and 2017, neither President Barack Obama nor candidate Hillary Clinton sought to have the election of 2016 overturned. Clinton didn’t call her supporters to the streets to disrupt the normally routine task of Congress counting electoral votes. The losers in 2016 were not digging in their heels, denying reality.

And when some said in 2017 that Trump was not their president, they were mostly rejecting him symbolically—implying that he was not fit to be president and they would not consider him their leader. There was no huge movement, run by the leader of the Democratic party, to recount votes months after it was all over. There were no oddball Q Anon ninjas seeking bamboo in Arizona. There weren’t dozens of lawsuits—all based on BS and all tossed quickly by the courts—to try to overturn the election.

Today, Donald Trump still has a grip on the increasingly extreme GOP, and he’s fuming in Florida, plotting his return, sometimes even seemingly convinced he’s still “Il Duce.” Trump’s stranglehold on his party is cutting off the fact oxygen supply to the GOP brain, and the Trumpy House vote to oust conservative Liz Cheney from her leadership post because she speaks the truth this week shows how tight that grip is.

There’s a sharp contrast between today and four years ago. When Rep. Elise Stefanik was named third-in-command among House Republicans this week, her first public statement called for “unity” as she works with her party’s undisputed leader—President Trump.

She got around to mentioning President Biden after first praising the orange one—Stefanik referred to the current president in a statement about how terrible, socialist and dangerous he and his party are—so she’s not denying the election results.

Rep. Elisie Stefanik, R-NY. When was the last time we had to care who was number three in the House minority party?

At least not yet. As quickly as some in the GOP are re-writing the events of Jan. 6 into harmless tourists touring the Capitol, I wonder what the gaslighting future holds.

But still. The shout out to Trump as the current party leader by Rep. Stefanik was startling. Think what it came after. Trump attempted to overturn a lawful election in any way he could. After all else failed, he called for protests on Jan. 6 that led to the violent storming on the U.S. Capitol by a murderous crowd.

What if that crowd had found Nancy Pelosi? Or Mitt Romney? Or Mike Pence? What if they caused so much chaos—as they seemed intent on doing—that Congress was prevented from fulfilling it’s role in the election?

Some people died that day—and President Trump was impeached a second time, correctly so, because he incited that violence.

In a rational world, Trump would be retired in ignominy, a shallow, shamed figure shunned by all as the Republicans move on and seek new party leadership. Instead, Rep. Stefanik called for the GOP to retake the House, and seems to be looking forward to the second Trump administration.

It’s all about the base. And there’s the trouble.

Tweet this week by Iowa's Republican Governor, Kim Reynolds. Odd how she doesn't ask about any credible news sources in her "where do you get your news" tweet. That's part of the problem.

Trump, term 2? God helps us. Not my president again, please.

Anyway, today you can buy a “not my president” shirt today with Joe Biden’s picture on it. As some on the left rejected Trump, so many on the right reject Biden.

The current “not my president” movement, however, is tied to the Big Lie, to the sense that President Trump was somehow cheated of a victory he won.

In reality, Trump was the loser. Neither he nor his fans can face that, but public servants who have sworn a duty to the Constitution, should feel some obligation to speak truth on this point.

Biden won. You can wear the “not my president” shirt with his image all you want—that doesn’t change the fact that old Joe is president.

Sure, Trump doesn’t accept it. Yet Trump edited weather maps and would not believe crowd counts nor images. Trump not accepting something isn’t very strong evidence for the lack of veracity of the thing.

I understood the “not my president’ idea in 2017, even if I didn’t buy it. Today, if Biden is not your president—if you, like Elise, look forward to Trumps triumphant return—you make me shudder.

In 2020, The voters spoke. Get over it, get on with it, and try to live in the fact-based universe.

The Trumpverse is perverse and increasingly out of touch. As Jan. 6 showed, that perversion can even bring anti-democracy violence.

May the Don never be my president again. Rep. Cheney was right, even if she speaks from the right. Donald Trump should never again get anywhere near the White House.

Ousted in the House, but not silenced--Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming will probably face many primary challengers. Because she would not speak the Big Lie. Good for her.

Trump Campaign SLAPPs Voters

This week, a liberal PAC issued a rather stark political ad attacking President Trump, using his own words. The “Exponential Growth” ad is from “Priorities USA”.

As a response, the Trump presidential campaigned threatened TV stations airing the ad in a cease-and-desist letter. Among the threats is the possibility of revoking stations FCC license to broadcast. Here is a Reuters news report on the situation:



Yikes! Is this the End of Democracy as We Know It?

Not really. This is not as scary as it seems. PAC political attack ads are not fair and balanced commentary, although this one pretty directly uses Trump’s words against him. The sources of the quotes are detailed in this article by Politifact.org. A cease-and-desist letter is a threat of a possible future legal action—it’s not a court order and has no legal authority.

So, you need to calm down. But not too much. Because the campaign’s response to this ad says nothing good about the authoritarian tendencies of our most incompetent president.

For one thing, this ad, biased as it may be, is clearly not beyond the pale. It’s political opinion that’s fair to express. Conservatives who promoted “Hillary the Movie” and supported Citizens United have no standing whatsoever to try to shut it down. I don’t know that “rough” political commentary sets the right tone right now as our nation should unite to fight a pandemic, but the Trump campaign threatening broadcast licenses over this particular ad fits into a rather scary, systematic attack on political discourse that Trump has waged.

The president himself last week blasted an NBC reporter for a softball question—the reporter asked what words of comfort the president had for the American people. The bombastic Trump did not offer any, but instead lashed out, calling the reporter “terrible.”

It fits a pattern, described in this Slate article. Trump’s campaign has filed frivolous libel suits against pretty much every major media outlet over stories or commentary that it doesn’t like. The strategy of filing such doomed lawsuits has a name—they are known as “Strategic Lawsuits Against Political Participation,” or SLAPP suits, and have been used in the past by certain groups, such as the Church of Scientology, against negative media coverage.

Because defending yourself against a libel suit is expensive—and the whole point of a SLAPP suit is not to win a lawsuit, but to slience critics.

Sure, every American president plays hardball. Politics is a vicious game. But this president is special in his disregard for any political norms and the harshness of the attacks he makes against perceived media enemies. And he fits into a cultural pattern of anti-science, anti-knowledge, anti-education and anti-discourse that is the political virus running globally amok right now, as recent years have seen a resurgence of right-wing authoritarianism.

Think of Trump’s threat to “open up the libel laws” during the 2016 campaign because he was unhappy with negative media coverage.

So now we are faced with a real existential threat. Whether it’s from the short-term economic slowdown caused by social isolation or a deeper, longer economic, spiritual, emotional and physical hit caused by pandemic deaths, 2020 is bound to be a year full of challenges caused by COVID-19.

And we have an election going on. To me, it’s pathetically sad that President Trump may yet be re-elected—in fact he stands a decent chance. He’s mishandled this pandemic from day one and the “it’s only the flu” crowd loves him for it.

His right-wing media machine and campaign can’t stand criticism of this president, especially criticism that uses his record against him. Yet, we all heard the quotes that the Priorities USA ad used. Ignorance and amnesia are not promoted by effective leaders who understand how a democratic republic or open marketplace of ideas are supposed to function.

So maybe this letter from the Trump campaign to TV stations is not, by itself, all that scary. It, however, fits into a very scary pattern: Trash the media, attack the media, sue the media—not for their lies, but to get them to stick to your version of truth.

I don’t have the heart for divisive politics at the moment. It is, however, important to all of us that critics of the president are free to say what they want. TV stations should be free to air this ad—it’s not beyond what the FCC should allow. After all, right-wing nonsense is a regular feature of the daily Trump Show.

No, I am not calling to censor the president, He should be more choosy in what he says, but he is free to say it. And we should be free to quote him and criticize him, even during a pandemic. And the Trump campaign, like Donald Trump himself, is once again revealing itself as a threat to democracy.

I do feel that we need to join together in this trying time. This ad doesn’t help. But what helps least of all is an incompetent, anti-democratic president and his sleazy re-election campaign.

So, share the ad. Make them mad. We are sitting on our couches and can't go anywhere--so let's make some virtual noise. The ad is already going viral, which is delicious under the circumstances.

Boost the signal. It's something we can do right now.

The Leadership Style of Duck the Media

Official portrait of Spiro Agnew.

In Des Moines Iowa almost 50 years ago (Jesus, I just made myself feel really old), Vice President Spiro Agnew famously decried the news media as the “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Well, he didn’t call journalists “enemies” of the American people, but we’ve seen a thread of political vitriol from the right spreading over the decades. It turns out rejecting “coast” culture and decrying the media snobs who look down on the “real” America is a winning brand.

Agnew was a crook who worked for a crook, and both he and his boss Richard Nixon left office in disgrace. But Nixon was an evil political genius, and many of the strategies he unleashed during the turbulent late 1960s have become embedded in American political fabric. The GOP as a party of the White South? See Nixon. The “mainstream media” as a distrusted punching bag? See Nixon.

And now we are in the fragile election year of 2018, waiting to see how potent the poison in the well has become. We have an ignorant, misogynist, narcissistic president who is pumped up and rallying the boob troops. True, it’s too easy to underestimate Trump—he does have some entertainment instincts that seem to serve him eerily too well in American politics, where government seems to becoming show biz.

In the run up to the election, Trump is ratcheting up his delusional, politically charged lies. See this PBS interview with a media fact checker.

Image from Wikimedia Commons, by Gage Skidmore. Donald Trump in happier times--2011. He wasn't yet the liar-in-chief.

Trump says crazy stuff: Democrats are a liberal “mob.” A caravan of migrants is full of “bad people” were probably funded by Democrats. This self-described nationalist (the reason, sir, that you’re not supposed to use that word is because in politics it is the philosophy espoused by facists) lies, lies and lies some more. Because it works for him. His base doesn’t care—they just like the message.

And most of all they like to see those enemies in the media squirm.

The tragedy, to me, is not that it’s unfair to accuse the American media of bias. There are all kinds of bias built into our media system that should be recognized. But to term journalists as enemies of the people is breathtakingly ahistorical. We have a First Amendment that protects the press because our founding political philosophers understood that, perfect or not, independent purveyors of information were vital for democracy to maintain itself.

I don’t think Trump cares about democracy. He is way too chummy with authoritarians, and makes too many wild assertions to be taken seriously as a man who wants to lead or convince or persuade. He’s a bully with a bully’s worst instincts—and he loves leading a bully mob.

Anyway, the deterioration of respect for sellers of information has led Republicans down to the local level to shun media. I read a post on Facebook by a local state representative, Ashley Hinson, who was calling on this local newspaper to publish an op/ed written by her leader, the Republican speaker of the House of Iowa. But Representative Hinson herself is part of an awful trend. In 2012, running for the U.S. Senate, then candidate Joni Ernst eschewed meetings with major Iowa newspaper editorial boards.

Hinson herself did the same with the Gazette this year, and she is not alone. I’m sure she has an explanation for her decison, and I’m also sure I don’t want to hear it. Because whatever it is, as a former TV anchor she should know it's BS. Shame on her. Shame on Senator Ernst. Shame on Republicans who shun editorial boards in general. It’s fair to be critical of the media—but to refuse to sit down with working journalists and discuss issues with them is to disrespect the role that the press serves in our democracy.

The Gazette was right to complain about the trend. See their editorial.

Vice President Agnew had a bit of a point, even if he was a crook. In his time, print media were more conservative than today—his main complaints were about network television, which then was way more powerful than now in shaping public discourse. As a media professor, I think the spreading of outlets, the ability of anybody to publish anything (including this blog) can have positive impacts. Voices that were silent can be heard. Diverse points of view are readily available.

But the rallying cry of “fake news” that Agnew’s remarks eventually unleashed have reached a dangerous fever pitch.

And the right has won the war against news, in many ways. Mainstream media is in retreat.

But, what’s left in its place? Fox “News,” Russian trolls, Brietbart? It’s a vapid swamp of delusion and misinformation. Sort of like any political speech theses days by that national embarrassment, the liar-in-chief, Donald Trump.

What Is Missing in Trump’s Prayers

From Facebook, image on CNN posted by Dennis Stouse: Victims of Maryland shooting.

On Facebook, I saw a former student post a meme from “Occupy Democrats” that stated “President Trump has blood on his hands.” I reposted it, because I liked what the former student had written, but sadly just got the meme.

For the record, I think that meme goes too far. I don’t think President Trump is to blame for the tragedy in Maryland. But I don’t think he’s innocent, either.

Starting in his campaign, our current president has carried on a Republican tradition of using news media as a punching bag. It’s useful to note that was also the approach of President Nixon, who initiated so many political strategies that have both benefited the modern Republican party and hurt our democracy—the new southern strategy, the crude emphasis on “law and order,” the win-at-all-costs ethos that isn’t unique to Nixon among politicians, but that certainly in his case went a few evil and illegal steps too far.

And, just as global warming doesn’t cause every hurricane, President Trump doesn’t cause all acts of violence against journalists. Then again, hurricanes are more powerful and more numerous due to climate change—so it’s not an error to think that action to mitigate global warming might be a good idea in the aftermath of a hurricane (or, honestly, why wait—in the before math, too).

So it is with Trump. His hectoring of journalists at weird Trump campaign-style rallies, his penning them in and singling them out, his insistence on lies and calling media “fake” because they don’t accept his clearly non-factual statements—the drumbeat of “they are the enemies” is bound to have an impact.

That impact is not direct to the Maryland shootings, I’ll accept that. But I also just read Katy Tur’s book on the 2016 campaign. The level of hostility towards reporters encouraged by The Donald is horrifying to read about.

March 14, 2016 cartoon by Gary Varnel of The Indianapolis Star. From editorialcartoonists.com, the web site of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists Sadly, still true today.

The front page of the Capital Gazette today was tragic to see. Go to their web site for profiles of Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith. They were members of a shrinking class in America—most were professional writers toiling to bring the best version of truth that they could obtain to their readers.

Image from Newseum.org.

They weren’t fake. They weren’t enemies of the American people. They should not have been targets of anybody’s wrath.

I do feel a heavy heart today. Talented, bright people who labored in service of others—that’s what most newspaper journalists do—were gunned down. The tribe has lost some talented souls.

No, President Trump is not directly to blame. But his responses have been tepid and timid. He tweeted “thoughts and prayers,” which seems like political code for “I don’t take any responsibility and wont’ take any action,” and thanked the first responders. Well, OK—thank you first responders. But there was no recognition of the victims as journalists. And he ignored reporters’ requests for comment during a walk-by photo op.

Of all people, Sarah Huckabee Sanders did better. She tweeted that a “violent attack on innocent journalists doing their job is an attack on every American.” Sarah, can you talk to your boss about that?

Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, also did better. His tweet about the shooting was: “Journalists tell the stories of our communities, protect democracy & often put their lives on the line to do their jobs.”

It would have been nice to have our president echo ideas like those. But his anti-media bias is too deep, and I can draw only one conclusion.

The great enemy of the American people and of democracy? His name is Donald.