CNN’s Jim Acosta, a main subject of The New American’s report earlier today on Trump Derangement Syndrome, is just one participant in the leftist campaign against the president.
Acosta dog whistles to the Left, using coded language to invite hysterical denunciations of the president, while other media personalities flatly call the president a “racist” or “fascist” or “Nazi.”
Examples abound, and while Acosta and his confreres worry that Trump supporters might attack journalists, they seem not to worry that leftists attack Trump officials and supporters regularly, or that a major magazine, in advocating a mass resignation of Trump officials, appealed in its headline to a “shadow government.”
Or that an influential celebrity called for a military coup to overthrow Trump.
Acosta’s Tweet and the Reaction
After Trump supporters gave Acosta a tough time at a rally in Tampa, the thin-skinned White House reporter tweeted thusly:
Just a sample of the sad scene we faced at the Trump rally in Tampa. I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt. We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy.
Acosta apparently thinks he is also required to comment about the motives of Trump supporters, and, not surprisingly, the tweet brought out the rage from Acosta’s Twitter followers. Some samples, courtesy of the Daily Caller:
Calling them Deplorables is euphemizing them. Maybe better to euthanize.
Pathetic, Ignorant, Shameful ….Trump + White Trash making America f*****g lame
This is sad and yes Jim @acosta also dangerous. I fear for the safety of journalists and for the American people who are being manipulated by #Trump. He will one day be long gone but he will leave a society divided and full of hatred and poisoned hearts.
This scene looks like a modern day Ku Klux Klan rally. Amazing to see that @realDonaldTrump – the man occupying the #WhiteHouse – is so comfortable in this atmosphere of hateful hostility, bigotry & deplorable language. #GodBlessAmerica https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1024467940257738752 …
I’m truly ashamed that this is what America has become.
Replace the MAGA hats and Trump signs, and this is straight out of any number of authoritarian regimes where journalists are killed.
I’ve seen classier crowds at cagefighting events.
Trump’s endless vilification of the media will almost certainly lead to vigilante violence against journalists.
If Trump succeeds in weakening American institutions sufficiently, he could wage an Erdogan-style crackdown on his media critics and independent journalists.
Acosta’s colleague, CNN Senior Media Correspondent Brian Stetler, tweeted that “Trump and some of his allies are promoting a ‘hate movement’ against the American press.”
Racist, Nazi, and Fascist
Acosta’s tweet is routine, as have been the accusations that Trump is a racist, fascist, or Nazi.
Among the headlines readers have seen in the New York Times are “Just Say It: Trump Is a Racist” and “Trump Is a Racist. Period.” Indeed, part of the hyperlink to that second piece is “trump-racist-s**thole,” that last a word that appears nowhere in the column.
Declared a writer in the New Republic, well before Trump was elected, “Yes, Trump is a fascist,” a clear indication the writer didn’t know what a fascist, or fascism, is.
Similarly, a professor at Drexel University declared in the school newspaper that “It has happened here: Fascism in the United States,” as the headline ran. “In Donald J. Trump,” Robert Zaller wrote, “America now has its first fascist president.”
Writing in Foreign Policy a year ago, the dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, Reuben Brigety, flatly declared a literal enemy of the American people was president.
“For the first time in our history,” he declared, “a Nazi sympathizer occupies the Oval Office.” And “in light of the president’s exposed racist character,” his cabinet members had but one choice: to quit.
Indeed, the Naval Academy graduate’s screed is topped with this kicker and headline: “Shadow Government … What Will You Choose?”
An invitation to a coup d’état? That’s what comedienne Chelsea Handler wants.
Media Neutrality
Granted, most of those headlines are over opinion pieces. But Jim Acosta and his media colleagues regularly publish anti-Trump opinions while purporting to offer neutral coverage, then complain that the president’s supporters don’t like them. Just this week, leftist NBC veteran Andrea Mitchell compared Trump to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Have the media abandoned neutrality?
Perhaps so, suggested Jim Rutenberg, the media columnist for the New York Times, even before Trump was elected:
If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?
Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career….
Do normal standards apply? And if they don’t, what should take their place?
CNN’s Acosta and the rest of the nation’s news media have told us.
Photo: flickr / Michael Vadon
