It's Anti-Trump Editorial Day

Since I'm writing this after midnight, anti-Trump editorial day was actually yesterday. 300 plus newspapers ran editorials complaining about President Trump's constant refrain of fake new and his calling them the enemy of the people. Considering normal editorial content directed at the president, no one would have noticed if they hadn't told us ahead of time.

Let's talk a bit about fake news, though. Omarose Onee Manigault Newman who is usually known by her first name has a new book out. In it she claims that someone has a tape of Trump using a racial epithet on a hot mic back on the set of The Apprentice. Omorose does not claim to have a copy of the tape and when the book was written she says that she has not heard it (she claims to have heard it since then). No one in the press has heard this tape and no one else has come forward to verify the existence of the tapes. People who are alleged to have the tapes deny their existence. Do they even exist? That's highly questionable since someone already went through hot mic tapes from The Apprentice and released the Bill Bush (grab them by the...) tape.

Omarose has dominated the news cycle for the last week but I have yet to see an article that uses words such as "unverified" or "uncorroborated" or "alleged tapes". Without those modifiers, the public is given the impression that these tapes do indeed exist.

Here's a hypothetical question: if a bitter ex-staffer made damaging allegations about any previous president, would anyone have covered it without hearing the tape? Of course not.

Fake news? They certainly abandoned normal journalistic standards. 

In 2017, President Trump complained that he had been informed that his campaign had been tapped. Editorialists all over the country insisted that there was no evidence that this happened. Never mind that the President in privy to information that the news media is not or that, as it turned out, there was FISA warrant for monitoring at least one campaign staffer which could count.

So when Trump makes a claim, the news media treats it with skepticism but when an ex-staffer makes unverified claims, she is given major coverage.

And this is being done to hurt the President and his agenda. I doubt that most newsrooms even see the double standard they use. Does that make them an enemy of the people? It certainly puts them at odds with the people who voted for Trump and his agenda.

Today's editorials will change nothing. Trump already believes the press hates him so a coordinated attack on him just provides additional proof. As I said at the beginning, if they hadn't told me that this was a special event I'd have assumed it was one of the 4-3 anti-Trump editorials the local paper runs every week. So one more Trump editorial isn't going to affect my opinion. So what's the point?