Trump's Bunkum

There is a lot to criticize about President Trump's social media habits, but Trump's Twitter pretty much is the best handle for understanding his present focus. Right now, probably because it has become known that White House officials (like maybe Chief of Staff Reince Priebus) contacted the FBI to tell them ixnay on the ussia-ray obe-pray,  Trump fired off on how the real leakers needed to be caught on Twitter. Then he went to CPAC to call all such reporting unsourced fake news. Amongst other falsehoods.

I pretty much think it's as specious as all hell for the guy who fooled around about sources undermining the reality of Obama's birth certificate and boldly claimed Ted Cruz' dad was a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald to try and call out anyone as fake news. Especially while he's reiterating the debunked Swedish terrorism and plumping for fake Parisian no-go zones. But he's actually doing it to deflect from his own staff's leaking. Because if there are real leakers, as his Tweets allege, then the news is not actually fake.  You can't have it both ways: only favorable news is true and criticisms are all fake. You have to consider the source.

And Trump lies all the time. His attitude towards the news outlets isn't to punish them for lying, but for coming close to the truth: take the selectivity of the press availability of Press Sec. Sean Spicer, that excluded very specific news orgs. I note that the orgs excluded from the gaggle all broke stories  that weren't favorable to the Trump Admin. Many along the Russian connections line.

But there's a limit to what attempted leverage can do--maybe the excluded news orgs will care less for access journalism, and concentrate on investigations as a path of not just lesser resistance but also greater rewards. After all, Trump's influence doesn't always even extend to the agencies that report to him--for one thing DHS isn't the one to justify his dumb immigration EO. And his new NSA isn't the one to support the magic words that are alleged to dispel terrorism.

Somehow the things Trump says are not assumed to be things that are so. As if he was dishonest. As if he was not trustworthy.