A picture is worth a thousand words and this video of Before Trump and After Trump “news” coverage from the gang at Fox will blow your mind.
Stop what you’re doing and watch how Fox News covered Obama’s comments saying he would be willing to meet with North Korea on the campaign trail in ‘08 with how they covered Trump.
Fox. News. Is. State. TV.pic.twitter.com/SNkRoBO5T2
— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) June 12, 2018
Never forget that we have at best a part time president. Trump is a guy who never worked at a real job in his life and he’s not about to start now. He not only leaves conferences with our allies early, he shows up late for work every day, typically at 11:00, and even though he’s present in the Oval Office, he’s making phone calls and watching cable news in the dining room adjoining the Oval. The man is addicted to Fox News and he loves watching the other news channels so he can get irate about how they’re not worshipping him. Seriously, here’s a sample of Trump’s “work” day reported by Axios:
- On Tuesday, Trump has his first meeting of the day with Chief of Staff John Kelly at 11am. He then has “Executive Time” for an hour followed by an hour lunch in the private dining room. Then it’s another 1 hour 15 minutes of “Executive Time” followed by a 45 minute meeting with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Then another 15 minutes of “Executive Time” before Trump takes his last meeting of the day — a 3:45pm meeting with the head of Presidential Personnel Johnny DeStefano — before ending his official day at 4:15pm.
- Other days are fairly similar, unless the president is traveling, in which case the days run longer. On Wednesday this week, for example, the president meets at 11am for his intelligence briefing, then has “Executive Time” until a 2pm meeting with the Norwegian Prime Minister. His last official duty: a video recording with Hope Hicks at 4pm.
- On Thursday, the president has an especially light schedule: “Policy Time” at 11am, then “Executive Time” at 12pm, then lunch for an hour, then more “Executive Time” from 1:30pm.
George W. Bush started his day in the Oval Office at 6:45 a.m. Obama worked out every day at 7:00 and he was always in by 9:00 a.m. Trump sails in at 11:00 a.m. and is back in front of the teevee at noon. In the history of this republic there is no chief executive who treated the presidency as a part time gig between golf excursions, but we’ve got one now. Watching Fox News propaganda and spurting into the virtual firmament on Twitter is what Trump thinks being president is.
However, there may be a silver lining to this: the best case scenario that we can hope for is that the Trump administration is as ineffectual as possible so it can do the least damage. That may truly be our best hope considering the cabal of crooks that currently have their hands on our government.
Maybe we’re better off with Trump watching television. What makes this a sticky wicket is the fact that his base is watching it too, to the exclusion of all else, and they think it’s real. And then they walk into a voting booth.
