Is It Really 'Fake News?'

Team Trump is constantly calling the mainstream media ‘fake news.’ Why? He calls it fake news because media outlets such as CNN, the Washington Post, MSNBC, etc., are so left leaning that they report rumor as news before fact checking. There have been several items that the media has reported as fact that, in time, has been proven to be false. To be honest, even Fox News is biased and has been known to report rumor as news that later was found to be false.

When I was a kid, way back in the Stone Age, news programs were on the television at 6:00 PM, ran for half an hour and reported local, national, and international news (news, not opinions, rumors or unsubstantiated reports), local weather and the sports. Newspapers reported local, national and international news articles without bias, weather, sports and the comics page; opinions were printed in the editorial column only and everyone knew those articles were opinion only.

When Watergate was being investigated and Nixon was undergoing impeachment, the TV stations carried the hearings so that the American public could witness democracy at its worst. An American president being thrown to the wolves for having his people break into the Watergate Hotel’s Democratic Convention headquarters. President Richard Millhouse Nixon had broken the law and was being punished for it. Senator Sam Erwin was the presiding chairman of the hearings and he, and the several other Congressmen on the committee, questioned the numerous people involved. Several of these people were sent to Federal Prison (affectionately called Club Fed). Nixon, in disgrace, resigned and handed over the nation to his Vice-President, Gerald R. Ford.

Flash forward to William Jefferson Clinton. A very charismatic President, he could talk an Eskimo into buying an ice machine for his igloo. The Republican Party investigated him for months and months because of rumors of illegality. What did they come up with? Those Republicans that just knew that the President had done something illegal because of Whitewater, came up with an intern that had been having sex with him in the Oval Office. President Clinton’s response to her allegations was, to say the least, ambiguous. When questioned by the Chairman whether he had had sex with Ms. Lewinsky, he simply said, “Could you define the word sex?”

Even though Clinton had been impeached, and found guilty of lying to the American people while under oath, he remained in office to finish out his term as the Commander-In-Chief; quite a difference in the course of a few years as to what was expected of the leader of the free world. One President impeached and resigned in disgrace and the next stayed in office and was not harmed at all politically.

Let’s flash forward a few more years to the Obama Administration. President Barack Hussein Obama, the first multi-racial president, was so vague about his history, his origins, that the American public wasn’t even sure if he was a natural born citizen as required by the Constitution. He was the son of an American woman and Kenyan man. Purportedly born in Hawaii, he spent his early childhood in Africa, came to the United States as an early preteen, enrolled in college as a foreign student, associated with Muslim, anti-American people, became a community organizer in the city of Chicago, ran for Illinois State Senate and won, and before his first term was over, ran for President of the United States and won that coveted role.

During his campaign, he consistently spoke about ‘fundamentally’ changing the face of the nation. His speeches about hope and changed showed just how charismatic this man was. He won the hearts and souls of the majority of counties and states regardless of questions about his heritage. The liberal rhetoric that came out of his mouth scared the crap out of conservatives across the country but liberalism won out. Even his wife, Michelle, stated that she could ‘finally be proud of’ her country, even though her country had given her a college education and a legal career.

During the election, every black organization got involved. The Black Panthers were reportedly trolling the polls telling people that they had better ‘vote for the black man.’ This, of course, is only a rumor that I have not investigated too thoroughly. Through it all, it was intimated that if you didn’t vote for Obama, you were a racist; an epithet that was used over and over for the next eight years when it came to the policies and demands of President Barack Obama. The liberal left would say anyone was racist if they disagreed with anything the President said or if anyone questioned anything about him, especially his heritage which he never really successfully proved. (He did produce a certificate of live birth from the State of Hawaii but that state denied issuing it according to the report of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona.)

During the Obama years, the President consistently used Executive Orders to legislate law, a job solely confined to the Congress. His policies were socialistic and, in some cases, so anti-American as to be unconstitutional. Also, during the eight years he was in office, Mr. Obama repeatedly turned his back on our allies while embracing our enemies. The Islamic threat, terrorism that has started on September 11, 2001 with the attack on the World Trade Center, increased exponentially, yet Mr. Obama would never utter the words ‘Radical Islamic Terrorists,’ nor would he concede that the threat was very real by constantly calling the terrorists the ‘JV Team.’ Mass killings, terrorist attacks, and violence by immigrants were seen as never before. Still, Barack Hussein Obama was loved by the media and the liberal left (as well as most Muslim countries and our enemies).

During the eight years that Obama was in office, respect for law enforcement declined to the point where people were attacking and killing officers of the law with impunity. Riots erupted over police shootings of black criminals under the guise of police brutality and racism against blacks. Were all the shootings called for or needed? No. Unfortunately there remain those that hate all that are not of the same color, creed, religion, sexual orientation or nation of origin. Racism, like schoolyard bullying, will never completely be done away with. Government cannot legislate against thought processes.

Was President Obama ever brought before an impeachment hearing? Were his actions ever questioned by the majority party? Not once. How far we have fallen from the days of yesteryear when the President of the United States was held to a higher standard and made to follow the laws of the country he leads. The left will still say that conservatives disliked him because he was black. That is so far from truth to be hilarious. Conservatives disliked his policies that were anti-American, they disliked the fact that he was legislating with Executive Orders thus circumventing Congress; they disliked his anti-American attitude. It had absolutely nothing to do with his skin color. Only the liberal left seem to have to play the race card every time they feel threatened.

Now, let’s come to the present, to the time of President Donald J. Trump. Here is a man that is not a politician in any respect. He is a businessman, a billionaire. During his campaign he promised a lot of things, the least of which was to ‘drain the swamp’ of corruption in Washington, DC. Since the election the liberal left has been screaming to impeach him, he is colluding with the Russians in hacking into the DNC computers, he is out to destroy America, he is going to undo the civil liberties of gays and blacks; his is an administration of destruction of all things liberal. The funny thing about this is that, since he was inaugurated into the position of President, he has fulfilled a lot of his campaign promises and he continues to strive to keep doing it.

What has Donald Trump promised? He has promised to secure our borders, even to the extent of building a border wall between the US and Mexico to help curtail illegal border crossing; he has promised to ‘drain the swamp’ of corruption in Washington DC; he has promised to repeal and replace the failing ObamaCare healthcare mandate; he’s promised to defund Planned Parenthood and their abortion clinics; he has promised to bring the UN under control. What irritates the liberal left so much is that he is actually doing his best to fulfill his campaign promises, something that no other presidential candidate has ever done.

What does all this have to do with ‘fake news?’ The fact that the media is crucifying the conservative right every way they can by reporting false news stories about collusion, corruption, and illegality in the Trump administration, even before it started but refuse to report the news about the liberal left’s illegalities and corruption. The First Amendment guarantees the right of freedom of the press, an essential element of keeping government honest, has turned into a free for all in the media and they hide behind that right to report falsehoods to undermine a presidential administration to the point of making it a mockery.

To be honest, Trump can make a fool of himself quite easily without the help of the media. He is not a politician so he doesn’t speak like one. He speaks like a businessman who expects things to go his way. This is not the way that politics works. In the political world there are committees, hearings, investigations, bureaucracy.  The President can’t just tell the board of directors what is going to happen and then, poof, it’s done. Mr. Trump will have to learn that if he wants to keep his chair in the Oval Office. He will have to learn some tact in his tirades. Then again, maybe the way he talks is just what is needed in the corrupt, career laded, halls of political Washington. Maybe that is what it will take to ‘drain the swamp.’ If only he could do as he did on his reality TV show, The Apprentice, when someone failed to be successful enough. Maybe he just has to say, “You’re fired.”

Let the left leaning media have that to run with. I can see the headlines now: President Trump tries to fire Congressmen; subtitle: Who does he think he is telling Congress they’re fired for being corrupt and not doing their jobs.

So much for one more tirade from a twisted mind. Food for thought or just another rant about politics? You decide.