Trump and Leavitt watch with glee as the press is crumbling

America we have a complication You don t have to stare at the empty space that was once the East Wing of the White House to understand that But solving this trouble requires a specific set of skills Skills acquired over a very long career Skills that make you a nightmare for those who pretend to understand Sometimes they are a nightmare for those who possess them It must be nice to reliably believe you know better to dependably think you re the smartest person in the room the setup news vice president revealed to Jane Craig played by Holly Hunter in Broadcast News No It s awful she replied She was right This is my lane I own it But to be objective there is no such thing as objectivity Objectivity is subjective Any reporter telling you they are being objective is either lying or doesn t understand reality or both Journalism is the art of using the scientific method to communicate facts to the populace There are no absolutes Forty years in this business has taught me one inescapable fact You cannot understand or treat the affection that has stricken the news media unless you ve worked in it while wearing a variety of hats We all share a reality and as President Donald Trump proves certain of us have more influence on that reality than others Just look at the pictures of the East Wing demolition It s symbolic of the dilemma To keep the playing field level and fair reporters need to provide vetted factual information to the populace We need to update our facts as the requirements dictate and we should apply the same standards uniformly for every story we cover We need to question everything our administration does no matter who is doing it Related Pete Hegseth s press crackdown is backfiring Plenty of reporters and news organizations have abandoned these ideals They ve sacrificed accuracy for access and facts for profits Thus the journalism world is having one hell of a intricate time communicating with its audience unless we lace our news with Pavlovian cues We can trigger you anger you and perhaps influence you to purchase certain goods but we have a real hard time accurately informing you about anything Still that s not the challenge That s a symptom of the issue The challenge is establishment During my career I have witnessed presidents Congress courts state and local governments dismantle free speech whether they re denying press credentials invading newsrooms jailing reporters or suing media owners I ve seen it in print television radio and online At the same time the establishment has encouraged media consolidation and allowed large companies to take over the business while working with the owners so each gets something mutually beneficial The authorities destroys media independence while the owners maximize their profits In the modern day only a handful of companies own and operate nearly of what you see read or hear while the establishment controls the companies that supply the news Is there partisan bias in news coverage Of program But it s a byproduct of profits Follow the money This is no secret communicated out of school This isn t speculation This is American journalism which is growing more inept and less able to do its job thanks to the regime What does the leadership do to fill the gap to supply information the country can digest These days it offers a child who wallows in puerile salaciousness while being totally empty of experience knowledge or professionalism We get Presidential Pep Secretary Karoline Leavitt She is Donald Trump s White House mouth piece Thankfully she doesn t get much airtime because it s often a pre-pubescent darkly comic rage-induced tragedy when she does She and every other high-ranking member of Trump s current regime are destined to go down in history as the most of feckless angriest group of criminal incompetents ever gathered under one roof Leavitt is worse than preponderance because of her lack of experience and complete lack of self-awareness As a parent the first time I saw one of my sons talk out of their posterior on a subject they knew nothing about I laughed If I did that with Leavitt I fear I d soon laugh myself into a coma It is solely best to not take Leavitt seriously Obviously Trump doesn t At the bulk she s assigned one show a week in the White House circus It is solely best to not take Leavitt seriously Obviously Trump doesn t At bulk she s assigned one show a week in the White House circus Still that didn t keep House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries D-N Y from torching her of late over her attacks on Democrats during the establishment shutdown Last Friday Leavitt claimed that the Democrats base is made up of Hamas terrorists illegal aliens and violent criminals If it sounded like something Trump would say then you get the point Leavitt is perfect Exuberant eager and engaged with the mental acumen of an abandoned sock puppet In response Jefferies called her sick demented and a stone cold liar Why would he even engage and respond to this childish stunt Doing so only validates Leavitt s bad behavior We should be thankful she briefs so infrequently it takes a palate cleanser three showers and a dose of exfoliant to handle even the minutes that we get out of the pep secretary once a week Any more of her on stage and somebody would have to steam the carpets and send in plumbers Leavitt has no more concept of what she s doing than a rat understands why it s running in a maze To her it s all about Dingus Don and his fabulous five inner circle Whether she believes God infused Trump with supernatural powers or she s convinced only he can save us it makes no difference Her loyalty is not to the United States Her loyalty is to Trump and to whatever he says Even if he contradicts himself or is caught in a lie or is shown to be the buffoon that he is she will invariably hum his political tune She often lies and either smiles or yells at the press as she does so Leavitt s staunch devotion to the president apparently justifies treating people rudely and with contempt She obviously doesn t understand that the president leads a nation instead of a cadre of cultists whether it be MAGA or Christian Nationalists The job is to represent everyone and having your pep secretary say that those who disagree with your politics are criminals is not the type of band building your average youth sports coach would encouragement though obviously Trump does Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts Her childish behavior doesn t end there In recent months HuffPost s veteran White House reporter S V Date contacted Leavitt via text message to ask about another proposed meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that was scheduled to occur in Budapest the site of a agreement in which Russia promised to not invade Ukraine in return for the country giving up the nuclear weapons it retained after the fall of the Soviet Union After mentioning this historical context Date inquired Who picked Budapest Your mom did Leavitt responded minutes later After Date sought Leavitt if she thought her response was funny she replied It s funny to me that you in fact consider yourself a journal sic You are a far left hack who nobody takes seriously including your colleagues in the media they just don t tell you that to your face Stop texting me your disingenuous biased and bulls t questions On Monday Leavitt narrated her million followers on X For context S V D te of the Huffington Post is not a journalist interested in the facts He is a left-wing hack who has consistently attacked President Trump for years and constantly bombards my phone with Democrat talking points Just take a look at svdate s feed it reads like an anti-Trump personal diary So what The perceived bias of a reporter or organization is not a prerequisite for answering questions or entertaining them I remember when Mike McCurry former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton would entertain all kinds of questions from a wide variety of reporters including a defrocked minister who used to ask about Bigfoot and UFOs McCurry never belittled anyone though occasionally the Bigfoot questions would cause other reporters to snicker Sadly Trump s actions while severe are not unique I was there and remember when a previous president tried to freeze out a news organization During the Obama administration the White House declared that Fox News was not a news organization but the communications arm of the Republican Party Obama merely tried to keep Fox out of a pool interview and in response CNN ABC and CBS boycotted the interview Leavitt s snarky quip offered as an answer sounded like it came from a high school prom committee Coming from the primary spokesperson for the president of the United States it was unbelievably unprofessional Currently the press corps is so depleted and so lacking in backbone that no one has sprung forward to defend Date s right to ask a legitimate question Leavitt s snarky quip offered as an answer sounded like it came from a high school prom committee Coming from the primary spokesperson for the president of the United States it was unbelievably unprofessional Trump creates a reality and routinely makes up facts to endorsement it At best the White House press corps acts as stenographers taking down what the administration spits out and regurgitating it for an increasingly misinformed electorate At worst we re propagandists amplifying lies with eager fresh-faced spins of our own Remember I own this lane Having worked in nearly every limit from reporter to executive editor and on every platform news is presented it is our job to question everything a president does or says President Ronald Reagan s acting press secretary Larry Speakes once announced that we shouldn t tell him how to stage the news and he wouldn t tell us how to present the news We need your help to stay independent Subscribe in contemporary times to aid Brian Karem s commentary The Trump administration stages the news tells us how to present it cuts out those who won t bend their knee And the bulk reporters and organizations eager to keep their access and their jobs and to remain profitable smile and eat a big ol feces sandwich If you disagree totally read the news about what the Pentagon has done You ll see there is no more independent press only right-wing fluffers Since Reagan every president I ve covered has required to at one point or another flush the press down a large toilet and call it a day Sometimes you could even say it was warranted but that would be a lie However good or bad the press is our system of establishment demands it be unfettered not on the faith of finding salient facts but on the mere chance of doing so The number of people who have the specific set of skills needed to fix this challenge are dwindling As the press becomes more subservient and less independent the first-hand knowledge needed to even stage a fight to get our mojo back is a whisper in the ether a pale ghost telling us what we could be while sighing deeply at what we ve become Take a good long look at what once was the East Wing Part of the People s House has been destroyed without discussion and it will soon be rebuilt in the image of a king It s the perfect symbol of our country and our press Read more about this topic Even Leavitt can t spin the joke check to Epstein from DJTrump White House spin on Epstein spirals out of control Why Karoline Leavitt is so annoying The post Trump and Leavitt watch with glee as the press is crumbling appeared first on Salon com