Rantz: Unhinged Trump tweet coverage
Jul 3, 2017, 8:15 AM | Updated: 8:52 am
As President Donald Trump continues his childish Twitter-assaults on the mainstream media, those in the media are reacting in an equally childish and unhinged way. It’s hard to see who is worse in all of this.
On the one hand, it’s hard to imagine the president doesn’t have anything better to do than moan about the “fake news” — a term his followers routinely misuse, instead pretending bad analysis is “fake news” when it’s just bad analysis. For someone who claims to never watch “Morning Joe,” he does seem to have an unhealthy obsession with the show.
On the other hand, because the media hates to be criticized, they’re getting unhinged in their coverage. The claim from some is that being called fraudulent is putting reporters’ lives in danger, with one anchor going so far to say as domestic news coverage is as dangerous as war reporting. (I haven’t seen the same level of concern from them when Progressive politicians call Republicans bigots and fascists right before their followers actually commit acts of violence)
I have a simple solution to all of this, though most people in the media won’t listen, certainly not CNN: Stop covering the president’s tweets.
CNN spent nearly all of Friday covering the tweet attacks against the cast of Morning Joe, yet Jake Tapper had the gall to turn to Twitter to repeat a criticism that Trump spends an inordinate amount of time attacking the media, but virtually no time tweeting about opiate abuse, Afghanistan, hunger and other important issues.
Fine. But President Obama didn’t spend much time on Twitter tackling those issues either, and, more importantly, let’s ask Tapper and his CNN colleagues how much time they’ve spent covering the president’s tweets (under a silly “breaking news” chyron) versus the amount of time they’ve covered on opiate abuse, Afghanistan, hunger, etc.