This makes sense, on all levels. You knew Donald Trump was going to react, and badly, to Fox News reporter Jen Griffin’s corroboration of the Atlantic story about the Aisne-Marne cemetery visit. The fact that he cited Breitbart as a source of veracity falls right into place. I mean, there’s a limited number of outlets for Trump to go to for counter-claims to make himself look good, and Breitbart and OANN are it, basically. He might be saving OANN for later on, when he really gets desperate, or because he actually knows how much higher the laughter level will go if/when he cites to them at all. Or, and this is plausible and probably as simple as it is, Trump saw the Breitbart story, and is too dense to actually read it and realize that they didn’t say much of anything, and so he cited to it just on impulse. That’s what I believe happened.
Jennifer Griffin of Fox News Did Not Confirm ‘Most Salacious‘ Part of Atlantic Story https://t.co/rUpbSWhHac via @BreitbartNews All refuted by many witnesses. Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting. Never even called us for comment. @FoxNews is gone!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2020
Here’s what happened in the real world, a place which Trump never has lived in, but has heard about. Washington Post:
Other beat reporters had confirmed aspects of the Atlantic story, too. But the fact that Griffin works for Fox, whose opinion hosts and corporate owners are seen as reliable supporters and defenders of the president, turned her revelations into a watershed development. It led to Trump’s call for her firing late Friday on Twitter — and an impassioned pushback from Fox News colleagues defending her journalistic honor.
Trump has no idea how real journalism works, because he has no idea how real anything works. Jeffrey Goldberg, author of the Atlantic piece, has been in the field a very long time. He didn’t get to where he got to by making up stories. In journalism, your credibility is your bond. Even on the lowest tiers of reporting and commentary, Twitter and the blogosphere, one’s credibility is one’s bond. Stonekettle, Hoarse Whisperer on Twitter and bloggers we’ve all read would be gone — me included — if we just started making stuff up.
Trump doesn’t get that, because he lives in the gelt-osphere, where everything and everybody is for sale, cash is king, fame is god. Scruples are for suckers, morals are for losers. Life is just a hustle to him. Trump called the journalists at the Atlantic, “jealous losers.” That translates as, “they wish they were me and had my money and fame.” He needs to believe that, because if he knew the truth, which is that nobody in their right mind wants to be him, then he’d have to go to the next level of analysis and figure out “what do they want?” That would lead to a discussion that Trump can’t have with himself, about what values in life are worth pursuing, because his mind doesn’t work that way. He’s too primitive.
The rest of us have made decisions, for example, about whether it’s better to live in the city or the country — Trump doesn’t care, it’s all the same to him, just as long as there’s a McDonald’s and he can put gilt on all the surfaces. He doesn’t know what it is to be a community member, anywhere. The rest of us have chosen hobbies and pursuits that have meaning and suit our proclivities. Trump has no innate talents to guide himself by. He just wants to cheat, at golf, business, everything, and squander it all between bankruptcies. And that’s just the physical trapping of life. When you get to the higher questions, and talk about life’s meaning, one’s social conscience, the making of moral decisions — the man doesn’t even exist on that plane, let alone have ideas about those things. And truth be known, he doesn’t think that you do, either. This is what he and Sean Hannity call “liberal elitism” and they make a fortune denigrating it.
Aisne-Marne showed the paradox of Trump being in a position of limitless power, when he is the most stunted of human beings. He wasn’t being crass — at least not deliberately — when he asked, “What’s in it for them?” He sincerely does not know. He cannot conceive of a situation where the dynamic goes anything beyond eat it, kill it, conquer it, sell it, screw it. He knows nothing beyond this. That’s his entire experiential lexicon.
Some of his allies have even gone on record, putting forth “the asshole defense” if you can believe it.
The president means no disrespect to our troops; it’s just that the way he speaks, he can sound like an asshole sometimes,” one of these sources, a current senior administration official, told The Daily Beast. “That’s how he is [when the cameras are off]… It’s his style.”
This is what Ivanka was trying to excuse away at the RNC, Trump’s “communication style” as she assured us how deeply Daddy feels. He’s really a great guy, with vast depths of feeling, but he communicates like a complete asshole — and we’re just supposed to accept the fact that Trump is an asshole. And we do. What he needs to accept is that the job of President of the United States is not a job for an asshole. Since he can’t perform credibly in it, he needs to leave it. What is truly inexcusable is that everybody from Ivanka to Mitch McConnell has decided that it’s okay for Trump to lower the dignity of the office, since Trump isn’t up to the job. Nothing matters but them staying in power and gaslighting is the order of the day.
The tragedy of what has happened in this country is that this narcissistic lunatic got above himself and had this crazy idea of running for office to begin with, and then a shambolic rotted husk of a GOP decided to play along, since power is all they care about, the welfare of the country be damned. They had a vacuum in leadership and were fragmented and splintered due to an archaic party platform, which hadn’t been working properly for years. Trump stepped into that vacuum.
What a lesson this has been. The price tag has been high and we don’t even know the extent of the damage done yet. We’re far from out of the woods. But we’ll get there. In 59 days to be precise, the adults take over. And make no mistake, as crazy as it’s been, it’s going to get a lot crazier before the last trump is sounded on this mad episode in American history and we get rid of this bum.
Wow, Fox is in the wilderness. Who’d a thunk it? Trump drops them like a used condom and most of the public sees them a conspiracy fiction talkers and corporate sellouts.
If Trump dumps Fox, where are his base going to get their “alternative facts”?
“gelt-osphere”
What an absolutely PERFECT one-word description of his crowd. That IS what they are.
Perfect way to describe the idiot in the White House…PRIMITIVE