June 3, 2016 at 1:32 p.m.
Famous last words
Famous last words
That's the message put out by NBC and others after Trump's news conference this week. The issue for the media, it seems, is that Trump has a temperament problem.
That is to say, he keeps calling people names, at least that's the way the media looks at it. For instance, he called the neoconservative Bill Kristol a "loser" for trying to recruit a third-party candidate to run against him; he attacked the media, again, as "sleaze"; he attacked the federal judge overseeing the case against Trump University as very "unfair"; and he continued to hammer Republican New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez for her welfare proclivities in that state.
Goodness gracious, he might not get 15 percent of the vote, if you believe the NBC analysis.
Of course, this is the same kind of analysis that predicted that, once the primary voting started this year, Trump would disappear like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Instead, Trump took home the GOP's pot of gold, otherwise known as the Republican nomination.
The press is undaunted, but a little analysis of their analysis might be in order.
For instance, why not call Kristol a loser? After all, isn't that what he is?
For those of you who might care, Kristol's problem isn't that Trump isn't a conservative, it's that he isn't a neoconservative - otherwise known as prostitutes for the military-industrial complex and who were former socialists and liberals who were long ago run out of the Democratic Party for their outrageous militarism.
That's when they started carpetbagging in the Republican Party.
Kristol himself is prominent only because A) his father basically founded the neoconservative movement and was called its godfather, and so Billy got handed a political career he otherwise would not have had, and B) well, there is no B.
So, a guy gets an advantage by having a famous father and what does he do with his political career? Yes, he ends up working for Dan Quayle - he was called "Dan Quayle's brain" by The New Republic, a dubious distinction indeed - and obviously his intellect could take him no further, so he used what inheritance credibility he still had to launch his Weekly Standard war magazine.
Most lately, he wants David French (What? You haven't heard of him, either?) to be president.
This is pretty much the resume of a loser, which the press understands. NBC journalists are just upset because they are supposedly the only ones who should have the lack of temperament to call people losers.
And what about Trump's attacks on the media, on Martinez, and on the judge?
Well, all of this is very concerning to Chuck Todd and the others at NBC's First Read. Yes, this will surely sink Trump, they gloat. Here's how they put it, with advice for other media on how to attack Trump:
"But you have to ask: Is this how Trump would govern as president? Fellow journalists, don't focus too much on the attacks on the media. Focus instead on Trump criticizing (again) a federal judge and his party. Those issues go at the heart of governing and respecting the nation's system of checks and balances."
Again, a little analysis of this analysis is in order.
First, why is Todd and company giving fellow journalists advice on how to sink Trump? Is it really their mission to elect Hillary Clinton and to be blatantly partisan, or should they be trying to report what's going on without proselytizing for one side?
Four years ago, everyone knew the media was in the tank for Obama, though the media didn't admit it; now, they're effectively declaring their support for Hillary in their bylines.
As for the advice itself, note they advise journalists to ignore Trump's attacks on them because reporting that may in fact boost this year's ultimate outsider ("bashing the media only helps Trump").
Apparently, these mucklessrakers don't think federal judges should be criticized, either. This would be the same coterie of judges who for years have actively legislated from the bench and who have spent the last decade rubber-stamping the decisions of federal agencies and growing the power of the bureaucracies, even going so far as allowing them to determine their own jurisdictional boundaries when they make rules.
This issue does surely march to the heart the nation's "system of checks and balances," as Todd writes, but it's the judges who have upset the system, and it is Trump who is trying to restore some semblance of checks and balances.
The press is also gravely concerned about Trump attacking members of his own political party. He shouldn't speak ill of fellow Republicans, they say. Again, it's a matter of temperament.
It would be negligent of us not to mention that, for years, this was the advice the Republican establishment gave to its rank-and-file members while they were betraying them. Don't speak ill of us, the establishment warned, don't be ill-tempered.
To be sure, Trump is ill-tempered, which is why he's the Republican Party's presumptive nominee. The electorate voted for the ill-tempered guy because the electorate is ill-tempered and in the mood for some not-so-polite revolution.
This is ultimately what the media is afraid of. They are afraid of the voters, the people with really bad temperaments these days - people who are angry after years of being lied to, of being told to shut up, of being accused of being domestic terrorists and racists and worse, and of having their jobs and living standards taken away and demolished.
The voters with the bad temperaments have dispensed with the Republican establishment, and they are hungry to take down other segments of the global establishment, such as the media and its front-line soldiers, such as Chuck Todd and company.
So when the media tells you Trump is in big, big trouble, what they're really reporting is that they are the ones standing in Custer-like territory, with no clear escape route.
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