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Hallelujah. CNN is safe again. No more Jeffrey Lord. No more Kayleigh. (At least, if there’s a God, they’re gone — let’s pray Trump included them in the ban.) Donald Trump, as part of his effort to turn America into a fascist state, has banned his employees and surrogates from appearing on CNN.
Why? Trump offered up a Russian talking point to justify his action: fake news.
Fake news, you see, is something the Russian created during this last election in order to trick American voters into supporting Putin’s candidate, Donald Trump. The term fake news is now used by Trump and his supporters to describe any actual real news, or real news outlet, so as to obfuscate and confuse, in the hopes that no one will pay attention to how Putin helped elect an American president.
I for one just turned CNN on again. I’ve been having an allergic reaction to Lord and Kayleigh (and Greta on MSNBC). But if Trump is banning CNN, then CNN is my new home.
More from Politico:
The White House has refused to send its spokespeople or surrogates onto CNN shows, effectively icing out the network from on-air administration voices.
“We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,” said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent.
A CNN reporter, speaking on background, was more blunt: The White House is trying to punish the network and force down its ratings.
“They’re trying to cull CNN from the herd,” the reporter said.
All jokes aside, what Trump is doing is deadly serious. It’s fascist. It’s un-American. And it’s pure Trump. Trump doesn’t like that CNN, along with every other actual news network, keeps calling him and his top spokesman, Sean Spicer, out on their lies. Trump is used to getting his way, and his narcissism doesn’t permit him to accept anyone correcting his obvious and incessant lies. So Trump is now losing it, and taking his ire out on CNN.
And more generally, Trump’s success depends on destroying the media. The American press are the only arbiters of truth we have left. While some Republicans are speaking up against Trump, most are still toeing the party line. The media, however, doesn’t tow any line. And that’s a problem for a president who never met a lie he didn’t like. Trump has a very difficult time telling the truth, and it’s already catching up with him. He cannot handle being challenged, and he cannot handle being outed as a liar. So, the attack on CNN is half ire and half strategy. The CNN’s of the world are stopping Trump from lying with impunity.
It’s an interesting thing, trying to teach the media a lesson. When I worked for Republican Senator Ted Stevens, a very long time ago, we had an Anchorage newspaper that really didn’t like our boss. They called once for an interview about a topic I worked on, our press secretary said “yes,” and I asked him why he didn’t just cut them off. He said they tried that once, with disastrous consequences. The paper would still write about our issues, but they wouldn’t include our position, our arguments, our point of view. At least when we talked to the paper, they’d include a quote from us in the article, and readers would be able to consider a counterargument.
And that’s the danger here for Trump. It’s not like CNN can’t keep on reporting about all of Trump’s lie and lunacies. And honestly, I don’t tun into the CNN or any other network to hear Sean Spicer, Mike Pence or anyone else who works for Trump — in fact, I change the channel when they come on. I watch CNN because I like their anchors, they’re reporters, and their ability to find out what’s going on. And that won’t change, just behave Donald Trump is off his meds.
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