Trump's illicit "fake news" campaign

What is the cause and what is the effect? Trump's comments are often times outlandish and deserve scorn. That is the reason for his "fake news" campaign. He claims that whenever the press trots out some of his other worldly comments, that is fake news.

He embarrassed the Israeli P.M. by asking him in front of a national television audience to stop building settlements, a highly contentious issue suited for behind-the-scenes diplomacy.

He wasn't through embarrassing Netanyahu. He then declared that he was open to a one-state solution, an even more contentious issue. Again, this was done before a national television audience. On camera, Netanyahu straightened out the President.

Later, Trump's ambassador to the U.N. stated the U.S. strongly supported the two-state solution, reinstating the 25-year old position and in conflict with Trump's comments on national television.

Trump favors a 20% "border tax," which is a euphemism for a tariff, to pay for his tax lowering proposals. A tariff is essentially a regressive tax on American consumers.

Trump strongly encourages friendship with Russia. His SecDef considers Russia an existential enemy.

Trump thinks NATO is obsolete. As we speak, Pence is in Europe assuring our allies the U.S. is fully committed to NATO.

But then it gets confusing. Regarding NATO, the Guardian reports, "The signs have been mixed, and confusing, since Donald Trump won election last November. He initially signaled warmth towards Vladimir Putin and some scorn towards Nato. More recently he has appeared to backtrack on both fronts. But Pence lost them when he went further than US defence secretary James Mattis at Nato headquarters last week in rebuking Nato members such as Germany, France and Italy for failing to pay a fair share of its financial burden. Echoing Trump’s threat last year that he would not necessarily be bound by Nato’s article five, which commits every member to come to the aid of any that comes under attack, Pence reiterated the president’s warning that military help might depend on how much a country under attack had contributed to Nato."

All of this deserves some attention from the press. However, it is negative coverage, according to Trump. Thus it is "fake news" much the same as the leak was real but reporting the leak was "fake news." Yes, Trump actually said that in his press conference Thursday. That, too, deserved attention from the press.

 

Nothing forces the media to make up/spin data into Trump attack adds except partisan bias....

 

But the White House is doing incredibly well! How can this be?

 

You didn't challenge a single line in the OP. That implies you agree with everything in it or you were unable to challenge the statements.

 

We presume that you are going to be talking about incidents where Trump is referring to malicious reporting of the press, and arguing that his claims are unfounded.

Otherwise, you haven't really said much of anything in the OP; just platforms that you personally disagree with.

 

Really? Issuing executive orders is easy. Working with Congress to fulfill his campaign promises is hard.

The White House is in chaos. The Republican Congress is awaiting guidance from the White House on repealing and replacing Obamacare and his tax plan. They have been waiting a month.

What does Trump do? He wants to escape from Washington. After Thursday’s press conference, he went on vacation to Florida, stopping off in South Carolina to give a campaign speech to Boeing workers. He gave another campaign speech on Friday. Today he is giving still another one. Trump doesn’t want to work. He leaves behind a mess in Washington because he wants to be in front of his adoring fans. This feeds his gigantic narcissistic ego. This is his third weekend vacation in a row. He has been on the job for four weekends, and he has been on vacation for three of them.

In the meantime, Congress is waiting.

 

Vis a vis the OP, according to you, you saw nothing wrong with Trump's performance. Now that is interesting. Here is a comparison between Obama's first month in office and Trump's.

during his first month in office, Barack Obama:

Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
Banned torture.
Signed a $787 billion stimulus bill.
Sent 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
Ended the month with a net job approval rating of +27 percent.

Donald Trump has:

Signed no legislation.
Mostly signed executive orders that are either routine (pay freezes, a halt to new regulation, reversing the Mexico City rule) or little more than PR messages to his base (cracking down on drug cartels, financial regulatory reviews, rebuilding the military, etc.).
Signed one executive order that was important, but rolled it out so incompetently that it caused massive chaos and was promptly overturned by the courts.
Sat idly by at dinner while aides discussed a North Korean missile launch and then failed to respond in any way at all.
Has presided over a White House so especially leak-prone and amateurish that people are already taking bets about which senior officials will get fired within the next few weeks.
Ended the month with a net job approval rating of about -8 percent.

No doubt you will appreciate Trump's performance during his first month.

 

I'm not sure what you think these comparisons are supposed to mean to me…

I think you missed out of a few things, either that, or you cherrypicked. He also:

1) Minimizing the Economic Burden of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Pending Repeal
2) Expediting Environmental Reviews and Approvals for High Priority Infrastructure Projects
3) Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety
4) Banned all executive branch officials from lobbying for five years after they leave office and places a lifetime ban on lobbying a foreign government.
5) Order lays the administration's "Core Principles" regarding the U.S. financial system, which includes 1)Making regulation "efficient, effective and appropriately tailored
6) Signed a Memoranda regarding Construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline

And the list goes on.

I do; and the only reason why is because Trump is responding to the will of the electorate. This is a sign of a democracy functioning as it was intended.

 

It's okay though, he has job security.

 

Mostly flat out wrong. Far from being embarrassed Netanyahu, and Trump appeared to be engaged in some good natured, probably preplanned, back and forth.

The border tax almost certainly isn't happening, it's a bad idea.

Insisting that our NATO allies spend the agreed upon amount on their own defense is scarcely trying to dynamite NATO. It's been done by numerous administration going back at least to Johnson. And his statement was that it might be obsolete.

And of course the spin on the leaks, is misrepresented as well the fake news wasn't that there were leak's but that they showed some sort of wrong doing beyond lying to the VP which even the FBI now says there is nothing like that there.. The fake news was about what was in the leaks, of course, not the leaks themselves.

 

Bravo, excellent response. I love it when posters defend Trump. It is very rare. Usually, they change the subject to Obama, Clinton, liberals, anyone but Trump.

That said, my original topic, Trump's "fake news" campaign is fraudulent and you know it. We both trust the news media. They are not the enemy of the people. Trump actually said that, incredible but true.

 

Don't count on it. How long do you think Republicans in Congress are going to put up with his antics. Taking a weekend vacation every week while Congress is awaiting his guidance on repealing and replacing Obamacare, tax reform, immigration reform, and infrastructure repair is not very bright.

He is pulling this stuff because he thinks he can't be replaced. He can be. It's called impeachment or the 25th Amendment.

 

Modern politics forces people to defend people they don't like because people aren't honest about their characterizations about other people.

Speak for youself; only 6% of people actually trust the mainstream media.

The mainstream media has become irrelevant; in more ways than one.

 

I don't care how Trump appeared. He lives in his own little world. He embarrassed Netanyahu by bringing up issues best left for the negotiating table, not a national television audience. If you can't understand that, I can't help you.

Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R, Wis.) are proposing a 20 percent border tax. Their goal is to level the playing field between American manufactured goods and foreign goods. And the promise is that a border tax will return manufacturing jobs to America. You are right about one thing. It is a bad idea, but it is Trump's idea just as I said.

Trump told a German audience that NATO is obsolete.

I saw no news article concerning the contents of the leak. The very opposite is true. The media is saying the transcript of the phone call hasn't been released yet.

 

Really? The White House proudly trotted out the new Fox News poll that shows the voters trust Trump more than reporters. The final tally was 45% to 42% in favor of Trump. Interesting that it was that close.

This amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy because 81% of Republican voters favored Trump in the poll. Independents who normally vote along conservative lines favored Trump 52% 26%. 79% of Democrats trusted reporters more than Trump.

Republicans who say they have trust in the media has plummeted to 14 percent from 32%. This is easily the lowest confidence among Republicans in 20 years.

So when Trump is preaching his "fake news" mantra to his adoring fans as he did in Melbourne, Florida, on Saturday, he essentially is preaching to the choir. They and others like them are the ones skewing the poll in Trump's favor.

Conclusion: to say Americans do not trust the news media is extremely misleading. As statistics show, Republicans don't trust the news media and for good reason.

For example, at that same rally in Melbourne, should Americans trust Trump when he said, "Look what's happening last night in Sweden," alluding to past terrorist attacks. The remark left Swedes scratching their heads, because no attack had occurred. The former Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, later mocked Trump's comments in a tweet. "Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound."

Should Americans trust Trump when he tweets, "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" SecDef James Mattis disagreed with Trump. Reince Priebus avoided answering questions from CBS's John Dickerson and Fox's Chris Wallace about the validity of Trump's comment. Instead, Priebus railed about news stories from unnamed sources, a Washington stable since the days of, well, Washington.

Mattis said that the term, "enemy of the people," is reserved for Hitler, Stalin, and ISIS. "The press, as far as I'm concerned, are a constituency that we deal with, and I don't have any issues with the press myself." In other words, Mattis was being kind.

It is with a certain amount of irony that Republicans trust Trump over reporters. It follows that 45% of Republicans think the media is the "enemy of the people." More and more Trump fans' loyalty to Trump surpasses loyalty to America. That is alarming.

 

It seems like every time he complains about the "dishonest media" he makes a claim that is profoundly inaccurate. It's like he's making a preemptive attack for when they will call him out on his own dishonesty.

 

It's better that he will not do impromptu speech , the more the blunder the more enthusiastic the press would fest over it, and he could only defend himself by calling it a fake news. Better do it with a written speech where deliberations of all angles were made and prevent unwanted reactions.
# he should do better as a President #

 

Fake news, you mean MSM? They are doing it all by themselves and Trump plays them like a fiddle.

 

In the meantime, he's flushing our tax dollars down the toilet with this permanent vacation he's been on.

 

You have no idea how to read statistics; and did you must think I'm stupid because you obviously didn't think that I would research these statistics on my own.

http://static.politico.com/39/51/79db278d40d1a48e50747d74b48a/170217-fox-news-media-poll.pdf

About 1,016 people reponded to the survey. Democrats are over represented in the survey, with political ideneitication leaning 42% Democrat to 39 Republican. Yes, more Republicans disagree with the media, but you ignore the fact that more Democrats agree with the media, a 79%/ 8% in favor of the media. The only thing you've proven was that Republicans are just as partisan as democrats.

Also, the survey doesn't mention "independents who lean conservative." You just made that up. Regardless, independents, 54% (not 52%) of them, trust Trump more than Reporters, according to the poll.

No, the first conclusion is that you're lying about statistics and hoping that I wouldn't research the statistics on my own. That was your first mistake.

Your second mistake was that you ignored the fact that Republicans and Independents both don't trust the media. The only people who seem to trust the media are clinton voters and liberals.

Even independents and moderates understand that Obama recieved easier coverage.



The rest of your post is just incoherent drivel, I don't even feel like addressing it.

 

How's what? Only 6% of people trusting the media? The media is not trustworthy; what else is the reason?

 

I was thinking about this the other day. If he would just shut his mouth for more than a day then maybe he wouldnt get negative press for saying something stupid or I dont know..take his damn twitter away

 

You weren't paying attention they were all busily making the case the man had at least violated Logan and that Trump had to be complicit in it therefore ought to be impeached.
No he said Might be obsolete and it was here in the relatively early days of the campaign. They will propose but it's going no where.

You are wrong about Bebe and Trump they're old buddies from back in Netanyahu's days as UN ambassador. But as long as you can't take off the hate Trump blinders you won't understand that because you can't deal with the idea that Trump might actually have friends.

 

Polls vary widely depending on who you ask and what is asked. This is from FiveThirtyEight, a pretty reliable source. His approval rating varies from a high of 55% to a low of 41%. Average is: Approval - 45%; disapproval - 50%

Here’s what we can say for sure: It’s unprecedented for a president to face so much opposition from the electorate so soon. Recent polls show that anywhere between 43 and 56 percent of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s job performance. Even if you take the low end of that range, Trump’s numbers are much worse than any past president a month into his term.1 So says 538.

POLLSTER POPULATION* METHOD APPROVE DISAPPROVE
Rasmussen Reports LV Automated + online 55% 45%
Morning Consult RV Online 49 45
Zogby LV Online 48 43
Fox News RV Live caller 48 47
Emerson College RV Automated 48 47
Harvard-Harris RV Online 48 52
YouGov RV Online 46 49
Ipsos Adults Online 46 50
SurveyMonkey Adults Online 46 53
CNN / ORC Adults Live caller 44 53
YouGov Adults Online 43 47
Public Policy Polling Voters Automated + online 43 53
IBD / TIPP Adults Live caller 42 48
Quinnipiac RV Live caller 42 51
Pew Research RV Live caller 42 54
Gallup Adults Live caller 41 55
CBS News Adults Live caller 40 48
Pew Research Adults Live caller 39 56
Average 45 50