Meanwhile, Trump still has his rallies. Taxpayer funded lunatic rants. And each one is more rage fueled than the last. Why not? Each time he surrounds himself with his stupid and angry followers, he is guaranteed the same national attention he got before he won the presidency.
There have been mad, tyrannical leaders on the world stage in the past. Who could forget Qaddafi's ninety minute bizarro rant at the United Nations in 2009?
The UN is a favorite stage for the lunatic leader. Ahmadinahad's 2011 assaults on reality and the world were so offensive that there was a walkout by US and European delegations.
And now we have Trump. Yes, after the election, the media reflected shamefully that maybe they should not have given him so much coverage. But the ratings! Who could take their eyes off this train-wreck in motion? And yet, the end result was an electorate that had not heard a single Clinton speech while being fed the full blown ugliness of Trump's assaults day after day after day.
What we learned -- what I thought we had learned -- from the election coverage, was that Trump feeds on that coverage. He may be stupid, but he knows how to play to the crowd. And he knows that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
He is also batshit crazy.
Put that all together and we have the Trump rally. He personally hates people. But he adores his adoring crowds. And surrounded by people cheering him on, there is nothing he can say that is too unhinged. And surrounded by TV cameras, he cannot be happier. Unless, of course, that he knew that those TV networks were going to be playing his insane attacks, name calling and lies, on a regular loop, all damn day.
They even call it "Trump's greatest hits."
Have we learned nothing???
I have been weaning myself from MSNBC and CNN. Honestly, there isn't that much news being covered. You can hear the headlines of Trump's daily obscenities in the first five minutes of any hour. Yes, it is important to keep us informed about what is happening in Puerto Rico, a country neglected by Trump, still not recovered from last year's hurricanes as they anticipate the next one. And we need to keep hearing about the horrendous abuses to immigrants and families seeking asylum, a humanitarian disaster caused by Trump and his gleeful attorney general. Jobs being lost, prices going up, wages stagnating as Trump acts out his decades long fantasies about economic power.
We need to keep hearing about how our allies are now needing to defend themselves against our mad leader. And what happens now that North Korea is doing what it has always done, lies as it pursues its plans to threaten and eventually dominate the Korean peninsula? And then there is Putin, Trump's favorite dictator. With no adults in the room to provide an honest reporting, we can be assured that Putin will be leading Trump around by his dick, I mean, promises of wealth and power (or at least a Trump hotel in Moscow).
We have some amazing investigative journalists, who have been uncovering scandal after larceny after lie after outrage. It has been exhausting for those who worry about our democracy to keep up with the tragedies and the cons. The last thing we need is for our news organizations to run Donald Trump's rallies on a never-ending loop. We don't need to see them.
After one of the all-too-many mass shootings, some of the media decided that it was wrong to continue to use the shooter's name. That kind of notoriety could only exacerbate the problem by encouraging other disturbed potential attackers.
It is not much different with putting a camera on Trump.
I was sickened yesterday when I began hearing the rants from his latest rally. And then heard them again. And again. This morning I posted to @MSNBC to stop playing those vile and violent videos. I won't watch them. When he starts to screech and rage, call names and tell lies, I will turn off the television.
We should have insisted on more responsible reporting in 2016, but we didn't know any better. Today we do. I hope you will help me by telling your news outlets to stop promoting the goals of this disturbed and powerful dictator. Tell them to stay on message, keep us informed, and treat the rallies and tweets as the fake news that they are.
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