All of these Sunday talk shows have a panel discussion during their shows – and that’s pretty much why I watch. This time, quite the reveal. Beside the host of Meet The Press, Chuck Todd (who pretty much stayed out of this back and forth), the people involved in this discussion were:
- “The Atlantic” [a very Left leaning magazine] Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg
- Danielle Pletka, SVP for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institution [a right leaning think tank]
- Helene Cooper, Pentagon Correspondent for the NYT (a very Left leaning newspaper and a reporter to match)
Sidenote: I really hadn’t heard Pletka before – hopefully we’ll see her more often
The discussion swung to the topic of the President-elect (and soon to be President) Trump’s penchant to use Twitter as a communications tool. It is clear that the MSMers (Todd, Goldberg, Cooper) are all aghast that a person in that office would speak out, speak out often, and (their real ax grinding) going around them. Cooper starts it off with a slight against Trump (emphasis mine):
Cooper: …The idea that the President of the United States is going to be having tantrums on Twitter whenever someone gets under his skin I think is frightening to a lot of people…
This is the paranoia of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). He’s not even Prez yet and he’s absolutely driving the Left to bed-wetting. It has to be the leftovers, in part, of KNOWING that Hillary should have been The One – and isn’t. But that bit about a “tantrum” – it will return in a moment.
Pletka: OK, fair enough but I think Rich (Rich Lowry, Nation Review Editor) is right – this is what works for Donald Trump. This is who he is and, and to a large extent, we need to all think about how it is that the rest of the body politic in Washington reacts. If we all stand up and start screaming every time he drops a tweet, we’re going to be very, very tired, sorry Jeff, at the end of the year…
Goldberg: exhausted.
Pletka: We need to recognize, first of all, that not every tweet is policy, ok, because this is a Constitutional government of our country…
Goldberg: When the President of the United States says anything, it is automatically news. We can’t ignore tweets.
Pletka: I’m not telling you to ignore them, I’m telling you not to edge toward the cliff every time you read one. That’s what I mean. It’s not an object of hysteria and it isn’t going to necessarily be the policy of United States. Plus we have a Congress, we have a Constitution, and he has a Cabinet.
Cooper: It’s almost as if you are saying, then, this is a responsibility of the United States to act as the adult while the President acts like a child.
There she goes again but it is instructive to read it again. Here is the Democrat framing – Donald Trump is ineligible to be President because he’s not an adult (when it really is “he’s not OUR guy”). Its an outright attempt, on national television, to continue the delegitimization. Think “Bush was selected not elected” all over again. It’s “Reagan is a dunce” redux. Anything but everything they can throw against the wall to see if something will stick – and the John Lewis controversy just adds to it.
The fact is, they believe that THEY (the Democrats) are the only ones sufficiently enlightened to govern. And it is they that have been throwing the tantrums since Trump trounced Hillary in the Electoral College. Pletka has a good comeback:
Pletka: First of all, I don’t want to say that he acts like a child, I say that this is who he is. He was ELECTED being who he is. It’s not what I would do but I wasn’t running and if we are going to manage how we assess the government and how he governs, we actually have to be serious.
And that is the most important of all – Trump won the 50 State Presidential campaign. We don’t have a popular election – direct democracy was one of the known dangers that the Founders knew would lead to despotism. They understood well, given the history they studied, that the selection of our chief executive could not be allowed to be chosen by the larger colonies wiping out any influence of the smaller colonies. Although the Dems keep calling us a democracy, we are a representative Republic where the States were to be an important part. The Progressives wiped out one check and balance that the States had on the Federal government when Senator elections became just another version of the House of Representatives. Now Senators are simply able to vote on issues regardless of their import to their home States.
They would LOVE having direct voting of the President – and remove yet another check and balance of Government. Lord help us when and if we become just a democracy. But I digress. Goldberg from the Progressive The Atlantic says something very telling – not only from the Progressive viewpoint but from the MSM as well:
Goldberg: This is very abnormal. To go back to (pointing to Helene). That’s a very abnormal way to be looking at the way the world should be organized.
Oh, butthurt time again. The MSM is realizing that their role of “information gateways” is being both diminished and ignored. Quite the little example – the absolute disdain that We The People just elected someone that really doesn’t need them. Its like Martin Luther nailing his thesis on the door of the church to start the Reformation – no longer was it required to have a priest to be the middle guy between the individual and God. Instead, to stay theologically based for a sec, Jesus ripped that to shreds the same way the the curtain in the Temple was rent as His death that was protecting the Holy of Holies.
No, I am not even trying to make an equivalence (remember, my guy was Cruz) here – just that Trump can go directly to the people without the ministrations of the MSM and THEY. DON’T. LIKE. IT. Once again, the Internet has demonstrated its disruptive force and all that the MSM can do is follow Trump’s Pied Piper schtick.
Pletka: but that’s what the American people chose.
And that also is stoking the MSM ire – that The People, not them, has made the final decision. And they hate it!
