(Newswire.net — February 24, 2020) — The midterms are only just behind us, but President Trump is already guaranteeing that partisan politics consume the media ecosystem for the foreseeable future. Thanks to his disgusting but clever strategy of demonizing particular media outlets, he’s managed to mobilize his voters by turning the journalists they hate the most into his media punching bag. Progressives and Americans everywhere can’t take this bait, and need to stay focused on the more pressing political issues confronting the nation as we prepare to retake the White House in 2020.
It’s an obvious distraction
It goes without saying that President Trump’s ceaseless feuds with the media can generally be classified as distractions; whenever things go South for the president or his party, he unleashes a withering slew of tweets against his least-favorite media outlets, or perhaps a particular celebrity or Democrat who’s angered him recently during a rally at one of his event venues. The recent spat with CNN’s Jim Acosta, however, was a particularly obvious distraction to turn attention away from the president’s disturbing firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The president has been trying to shutter the ongoing federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election because it makes him look terrible, and because it’s likely he was involved in a nefarious plot that was fundamentally pro-Russia and anti-American. You wouldn’t know this from looking at the news media, however, because journalists are infatuated with other journalists, and ceaselessly cover press scandals like the president’s meltdown with Acosta because they feel the need to inflate the fourth estate’s presence and importance in checking the executive’s power.
As wrong as President Trump is to claim that the media is “fake news,” many journalists and left-leaning news outlets genuinely do him a favor by obsessing over relatively trivial scandals, that are juicy bits of gossip but aren’t nearly as important as other developments. Americans shouldn’t ignore the president’s crusade against the first amendment, of course, but they should be realizing that every second spent talking about wealthy CNN anchors is one second not spent talking about his corruption, separation of families, or expansion of the war on terror.
To put it bluntly, the American people have a limited appetite for political news and don’t spend that much time thinking about the major stories of the day. When those stories are centered around CNN, then, instead of the ongoing Syrian civil war or the president’s victimization of minorities, for instance, Americans start buying into his rhetoric that the press is only out to inflate its own status. Progressives must realize this is we want to seize the mantle of power back from Donald Trump.
For those who are sick and tired of President Trump and his racist cronies in the Republican party who are enabling his fetid behavior, the media’s obsession with itself must be dealt with. It’s imperative to stand up for journalists that the president unfairly critiques – and CNN’s Jim Acosta did no wrong – but by allowing the president to use this event to unleash his made-for-TV anti-press soundbites we’re helping him win.