The Press: Taking Dictation from A Dictator

Holding our press accountable for giving us 4 more years of trump.

I'm pretty fed up with our news media in general.

If you were to scroll through my social media feeds, you would think I had something personal against them, the mainstream media. I haven't trusted CNN for years now, as their slow drift to the Fox News lite right is almost complete.

Daytime MSNBC, from Morning Joe Scarborough and Mika all the way through Katy Tur is just damn unwatchable. I've had to rely more on print news during the day for breaking news updates. Nicolle Wallace and everyone after her through midnight is SOLID, with Lawrence O'Donnell being my fave.

But some of the more traditional news organizations, like the big three (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have been nothing but cowardly -- especially with both ABC and CBS bending the knee to Cumquat Caligula (credit: John Fugelsang) and obeying in advance.

If you thought I had something personal against the media, you might be right. I hold them largely responsible for Donald trump's first term in office, and even MORE so for his 2024 "win." There was much focus on the fact that Kamala hadn't done the Joe Rogan interview, and that she was a failed "border czar," despite never having been given that responsibility. Too much border and inflation focus, not enough on the existential threat posed by trump.

I remember back in 2016, I was screaming at the TV set, begging reporters to ask trump a follow up question, to fact check him in real time. Never happened.

I watched in agony as he repeated the same blatant lies, over and over, with unchecked impunity as these so-called journalists sat there stunned, mouths agape, unable to offer any sort of reasonable resistance to the firehose of lies.

How hard could it be, I wondered? I could sit here now and probably recite at least a dozen of his most egregious lies, verbatim. Why aren't these news anchors prepared to counter his lies? Perhaps their bosses didn't want them to.

Recently, he's been holding these so-called press briefings, either at Mar-a-Lago or elsewhere, and the press is basically just taking dictation on a range of topics that swerve from insanity to bold-faced bullshit lies. And, when reporters finally got to ask questions, he never gives a straight answer or he uses his answer to slam Biden or Democrats.

I mean, this 78 year old schlub supposedly has his ear grazed by an AR-15 bullet, and it's completely healed in 7 days, but not ONE reporter felt it was important to ask about this miraculous healing. Nobody pressed for his medical report, either.

But I thought the job of journalists was to tell truth to power, to hold the institutions responsible, to be the gatekeepers of the truth. When someone says it's raining outside, it's not their job to report that someone said it's raining; it's their job to look out the fucking window and confirm.

I remember when Joe Scarborough and Mika cuddled up to trump in 2016, having been granted daily access to him and they helped normalize him, made him seem like less of a threat to our country. And now, in 2025, they've waved the white flag, issuing an embarrassing apology to him that should have lost them their entire audience.

Maggie Haberman, and in fact, most of the NY Times, took a pass on being critical of him in 2016, eschewing the possibility of having exclusive access to this car wreck of a person should he manage to slip past the gatekeepers into the Oval Office.

Their treatment of him in the most recent election cycle gave rise to a new term "sane washing," the act of making his abnormal tendencies seem more normal through the prism of their eager compliance.

It's hard to watch this shoddy journalism unfold in slow motion all over again, without the same amount of scrutiny and energy applied to trump that was applied to President Biden for his unforgiveable crime of being old while President.

You KNOW they know how to grill and interrogate people by the way they came at President Biden and Karine Jean Pierre, claws and knives fully extended -- they actually SHOUTED in that press room and the Oval Office. But, for some reason, those skills evaporate when it comes to trump and his MAGA minions.

There are few other examples of journalism done right. Jim Acosta, recently departed from CNN, was a fearless journalist who stood directly in the line of fire of trump's ire and asked whatever questions he needed to ask, trump's anger be damned. In his farewell message to viewers, he recalled the time he grilled Raul Castro in Cuba as his best moment, saying “It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant."

WHY am I hollering about this like the sky is falling?

Somebody has to. Non stop. As loud as we can.

SOMEBODY'S hair needs to be on fucking fire right now.

Not enough people's hair was on fire, that's how we got trump.

And he's trying to abolish birthright citizenship, he's freezing finding for federal programs, and he's well into his 900-page playbook for Project 2025 that he and his acolytes denied they were planning to unleash BEFORE the election.

I can't believe this needs to be said, because we ALL lived through the first trump term, but reporters should STOP acting as if Trump and his MAGA acolytes are going to give them truthful answers. They are NOT.

They will obfuscate, deflect, and distract.

This is all they do, nonstop.

Assume they will lie.

A reporter just asked trump's upgrade (downgrade) on Kayleigh McEnany 2.0, Karoline Leavitt, if she would commit to providing reporters the unvarnished truth, and I swear, I just looked at him the way you look at a child when they ask earnestly "Will Santa be here tomorrow?" The difference is, I would have a TON more patience with the child than I would with the grown fucking adult asking that bullshit question.

My dude, did you really just ASK her that shit? You wasted a question on that? I can tell you she's going to lie to you the way Kayleigh McEnany lied, the way Sarah Suckabee Sanders lied, the way Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer lied.

Charlie Brown, this time I want you to take a really hearty leg swing at that football because I, Lucy Van Pelt, commit to holding that ball steadfastly, just long enough for you to think you have a shot at kicking it before I yank it away again, you dumbass.

Maybe I'm asking too much, expecting too much of this crop of reporters and "journalists" for them to be more involved and less detached. I want them to give a fuck like we do, but maybe they're just not built like that, to relentlessly dig for the truth.

Why would anyone in their right minds, having witnessed the 30,000 lies told by trump in his first term assume that anything out of his mouth is trustworthy? It is ALL suspect, and should be treated as such until he draws his last lying breath.

We, at home, have been watching you fail, over and over and over, to get a straight fucking answer. They dodge reasonable hypothetical questions by saying they're not going to answer a hypothetical, and then they serve up dozens of hypotheticals to attack Democrats.

And you stand there, microphones in hand, nodding your heads while thanking the gods that you have the access to the White House so you can take dictation from them. How degrading. How humiliating. How utterly worthless.

Come up with a strategy, a gameplan for extracting information. Anticipate that they will dodge your straightforward question, so ask it again. And again. And again. Maybe it's time for the press corps to band together in a "suicide pact"; if they avoid ONE reporter's question, the next one repeats THAT question.

It is YOUR responsibility to dig, to get to the truth of matters, to investigate and uncover when the powers that be try to obfuscate, deflect, and distract. It's YOUR job to keep asking, to unravel and debunk the lies for us.

You OWE it to us.

Do your fucking jobs and PREPARE for this, and push back against the bullshit, because if you don't, then what the hell do we even need you for?

trump already has his own obsequious, sane washing propaganda ministers.

Be journalists, FFS.