Donald Trump, the President-elect of the United States, finally appeared before the press today. After six months in which he only held appearances before friendly crowds, Trump finally put on his big-boy pants and faced the media.
And it went just about as well as most of us expected. The man who is about to take on the most powerful position in the country, if not the world, maintained his hostility to anyone and everyone who he thinks is being critical.
Trotting out his familiar, tiny list of vocabulary words, the PEOTUS assured us that all of his nominees are terrific, that the inauguration is going to be great and beautiful and that his plans for health insurance reform will be amazing.
He also reminded us that Obamacare is a disaster, and that treatment of veterans has been unfair and terrible.
Most of all, he kept up his accusations about the media being his enemy. In addition to his usual whining complaint that the press is “unfair,” Trump has found himself a new word.
He must used the term “fake news” at least a dozen times during the roughly one hour appearance. He even set the stage by tweeting it this morning.
Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me.Are we living in Nazi Germany?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017
And this one, which is particularly amusing with its reference to winning easily even though he lost by nearly 3 million popular votes.
I win an election easily, a great "movement" is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017
The future chief executive of the land had his latest tantrum over information that last night CNN reported that both Trump and the sitting President were briefed on a memo that says that Russia might be blackmailing Trump. They did not include any of the juicy sexual tidbits, but they did say that the FBI has been investigating whether or not Trump campaign people were in contact with Russia during the election.
Trump went nuts about it, of course.
When CNN’s Jim Acosta tried to ask a question at the press conference, Trump snapped:
“Your organization is terrible.”
Acosta shot back:
“You’re attacking us. Are you going to give us a question?”
The response?
“Don’t be rude. No, I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news.”
Because he is, in fact, a serious professional news reporter, Acosta continued to try to get his question answered. He was approached by Trump’s Communication Director, the always angry Sean Spicer, who threatened to throw him out of the press conference.
We can say goodbye to the good old Constitution and all those wonderful amendments. There definitely won’t be any freedom of the press around after January 20.
We better all be prepared to put up a good fight on this one, or Trump will be right on one thing. Living here will be a lot like living in Nazi Germany.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7SO38jlrb0
Featured image via YouTube screengrab.
