McCain criticizes Trump for calling media 'the enemy': 'That's how dictators start'

[Deleted]

I don't know why OP is trying to explain Trump, like all presidents had problem with press. Seriously. I've seen his solo press conference and I was shocked. His behavior towards some journalists was at least rude (he treated CNN reporter like trash). You cant even say something about some standards. He should act like polite, wise and stable person, but he acts like spoiled child. Theres nothing "normal" about him and his views about media.
Media can be fair and unfair, person like president of USA should handle it like mature human being and not call notfriednly media "enemy of state", because its retarded.

[JohnBrown1917]

Did you not hear him? He would be a hero if he shot down the russian vessel. Let's go! Hero time!

Really, what are you on about?

[Deleted]

Really, what are you on about?

Dude, if you aren't informed, get out of the discussion.

[Elim Garak]

I miss McCain as a presidential candidate. He ran a very clean and classy campaign--when someone in his audience started shit-talking Obama, he put the brakes on it and emphasized that their differences were political only, rather than roll in the mud and make an ass of himself in front of the whole world. I'll take fifty of him over the gross incompetence we have in the White House right now.

Be advised, McCains come with Palins as a package deal.

[Saucerian]

Honestly, the media started this fight when they sold out to the left.

That said, I don't disagree with McCain. It is worrisome that the Trump admin continues taking the low road - and the media, rather than resolving to be less biased, is doubling down on it. I'm sincerely hoping for candidates in the next 2 to 4 years who send strong signals against all the divisiveness.

[Felya]

Karma. I'm tired of ignorance. Let the consequeces begin.

Are you Hindu, Tao or Buddhist? Karma directly translates as work or action, the 'cause and effect' meaning you are using is directly tied to these religions. The irony being, not only is using Karma the way you did, without being those region is ignorance... but, if you do follow those religions, the way you used it in embracing the consequences for others, would result in you being hindered due to the karma bite of your own embrace.

Sorry, see it in posts on sports forums all the time. Calling others ignorant while doing it, just made it very difficult to not respond to.

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Honestly, the media started this fight when they sold out to the left.

By not covering that Obama is not born in US as seriously as Trump did on his Twitter account? By ignoring the truthful media, that was reporting Obama's plan to jail American citizens as part of a government take over? Maybe should have given more attention to stories of Hillary the assassin, killing off her rivals? Spent more time on the story of Hillary being a Satanist who bathed in the mix of blood of children and their mothers breast milk? Should have been telling us unemployment under Obama is not below 5% nationally, but that it's 25%, 35% and 45% at the same time? Tell us that Russia is not in Crimea and will never go there? That Hillary has Parkinson's that will kill her at any second?

These are the stories that Trump and his 'truthful and unbiased' media covered, while the evil leftist media didn't.

That said, I don't disagree with McCain. It is worrisome that the Trump admin continues taking the low road - and the media, rather than resolving to be less biased, is doubling down on it. I'm sincerely hoping for candidates in the next 2 to 4 years who send strong signals against all the divisiveness.

No, you don't. Once you do that, how do you bitch about the media's left wing bias, every time a president that has never held public office, actually does and behaves as competent as one should expect of a president that never held public office and whose perception of law is based on his numerous lawsuits, instead of either education or experience?

This is where Trump supports usually say his advisors will be the best and will guide him to do the job right. But, just a reminder... Flynn was just last week...

[cubby]

More hyperbole but from a Republican this time. I call it hyperbole because every president thinks the press has screwed them over, Obama, Bush, McCain himself when he ran for president, thinking the press is horrible is not solely a Trump thing. Unlike those that I mentioned, Trump isn't a politician he says anything that pops into his head and I'm sure he's mad at the press, all presidents have been mad at the press.

Yes, it is solely a Trump thing. Unless you can find similar quotes from Obama, Bush2, Clinton, and Bush1.

No sitting President has ever attacked the media in this matter. Ever.

[zenkai]

Should you trust the opinion of a guy who chose Sarah Palin as his running mate?

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Yes, it is solely a Trump thing. Unless you can find similar quotes from Obama, Bush2, Clinton, and Bush1.

No sitting President has ever attacked the media in this matter. Ever.

http://www.hannity.com/articles/elec...-the-15464359/

[Felya]

Media is not the enemy, CNN and their ilk are Soros puppets and scum though. Trump should focus on fighting propaganda, expose these degenerates whenever he can. I mean Alex Jones, Breitbart, even Fox are media too, theyre alright for the most part.

How is a site that dedicated 3 hours to explain how the words 'spirit dinner' meant that Hillary is in a satanic cult that used the mixture of new born blood and the mother's milk as her ritual... being called 'alright for the most part'? Where are Obama's FEMA camps? Where is the proof of Obama's foreign birth cirticate? Where is his institution of Sharia law? Where is the assasin Hillary? Why is she still alive, if she has to live in an iron lung due to her Parkinson's?

How about that Soros? I read that Brietbart story, where a 'leaked memo' revealed from October that the rise in police violence, justified Federal take over of local police? They laid it on pretty thick with how evil that was and how dastardly Soros was to use police like that. I also read their article from the February 15th, where Trump sending the Feds to Chicago, is a fantastic idea and is done because three little kids died. That's your 'alright'?

With Fox, I think the exchange their morning show, which Trump singled out as best morning news put it. "Trump's business is the media"... "no, not anymore"... I'm sure the bad parts of fox is when they tried to sabotage his primary run, by making him seem "incompetent". It must have been because she was so upset at Trump for no reason, she was bleeding mad... bleeding from her where ever...

[Deleted]

Trump calling the media the "enemy of the American people" is a threat to our democracy, and I do not take kindly to it. Criticize and piss off the media as much as you want, but Trump went way too far. McCain is right to criticize Trump on this, but he should've gone farther.

The media needs to move away from liberal political activism, though. They need to reorient themselves back into the unbiased center. As long as they don't they lose the trust and faith of the American people, which again, is terrible for our Democracy and great for autocrats.

[Felya]

Should you trust the opinion of a guy who chose Sarah Palin as his running mate?

Uhm... those are the same people who Trump is representing... You do know Trump thought Palin was a good idea? If you split the GOP in half... let's just call one half tea party and the other just not... Trump would squarely be in the tea party half that pushed Palin as an outsider who is not part of the establishment. You are blaming McCain who is just not, for appealing to the same tea party logic.

If that's your measuring stick, then McCain is in better shape than Trump.

[Kujako]

Uhm... those are the same people who Trump is representing... You do know Trump thought Palin was a good idea? If you split the GOP in half... let's just call one half tea party and the other just not... Trump would squarely be in the tea party half that pushed Palin as an outsider who is not part of the establishment. You are blaming McCain wo is just not a Palin supporter, for appealing to the same tea party logic.

If that's your measuring stick, then McCain is in better shape than Trump.

And of course Pailin is back (like Freddy Krueger), this time as a potential ambassador.

[Felya]

The media needs to move away from liberal political activism, though. They need to reorient themselves back into the unbiased center. As long as they don't they lose the trust and faith of the American people, which again, is terrible for our Democracy and great for autocrats.

When this is the voice of opposition, the reality of free press being just that, is not even on the table. The media is not a single entity, but a mass of various shapes and sizes. When print and an hour nightly show were it, you needed enouph content to fill an X amount of pages daily and 1 hour of talk daily. When cable hit, that changed the paradigm, to fill 24/7 content. The next shift was the internet, where the limited scope of TV and press being a barrier to entry, the amount of sources exploded. As a result, the 24/7 content amount, wasn't just what you can show in X amount of pages and hours to fill. It instead became 24/7 as relating to the readers time, not the broadcasters. It explicitly leads to putting out more stories, to occupy your attention 24/7, while understanding that the reader skips content. What you end up with, is media explicitly being lead by clicks generated. If there are 3 million more people that will click on a story covering how they were right about their vote, those stories will inherently see more attention.

The solution is simple, but has a difficult part. Simple? Stop clicking on them. Stop giving SNL it's largest ratings in years. The difficulty here? It means admitting you are at fault... something that isn't just a flaw in Trump, but seems to be very common...

[Tijuana]

More hyperbole but from a Republican this time. I call it hyperbole because every president thinks the press has screwed them over, Obama, Bush, McCain himself when he ran for president, thinking the press is horrible is not solely a Trump thing. Unlike those that I mentioned, Trump isn't a politician he says anything that pops into his head and I'm sure he's mad at the press, all presidents have been mad at the press.









http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...219-story.html

Sen. John McCain spoke out Saturday in defense of the free press after President Donald Trump lashed out against the news media several times over the past week, at one point declaring it "the enemy of the American People!"

Such talk, McCain, R-Ariz., said on NBC News in an interview set to air Sunday, was "how dictators get started."


Trump calls the news media 'the enemy of the American People'
"In other words, a consolidation of power," McCain told "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd from Munich. "When you look at history, the first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. And I'm not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I'm just saying we need to learn the lessons of history."

The 80-year-old Republican senator was responding to several tweets by Trump over the past week, in which he repeatedly attacked the media as "fake news." In one widely shared tweet Friday, Trump said the press was "not my enemy" but that of the American people.

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The FAKE NEWS media (failing @Nytimes, @NBCNews, @abc, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
2:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017
45,100 45,100 Retweets 140,290 140,290 likes
In it, Trump tagged the New York Times, CNN and broadcast news networks NBC, ABC and CBS.

In the backlash to the tweet, #NotTheEnemy began trending, with people sharing stories about journalists who had dedicated their lives to - and, in some instances, paid the ultimate price for - reporting the news.

In the "Meet the Press" interview, McCain told Todd that a free press was central to a functional democracy, even if news organizations' stories challenged those being held accountable.

"I hate the press. I hate you, especially," he said to Todd, who laughed. "But the fact is, we need you. We need a free press. We must have it. It's vital."

"If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and, many times, adversarial press," McCain added. "And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That's how dictators get started."

These days, it is difficult not to notice McCain, whose dissenting voice can be heard - and is often amplified - criticizing Trump. In the four weeks since Trump's inauguration, McCain has made headlines rebutting White House press secretary Sean Spicer and ripping Trump's worldview in a speech in Munich without ever mentioning the president's name.

Even before the inauguration, McCain was emerging as one of the few Republicans who was not afraid to criticize Trump, blasting the president-elect's reported consideration of reinstating waterboarding as an interrogation technique.

"I don't give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do or anybody else wants to do. We will not waterboard. We will not torture," McCain said to applause at a November summit, emphasizing certain words with a point of his finger. "My God, what does it say about America if we're going to inflict torture on people?"

McCain's repeated criticisms of Trump have triggered the president's wrath, most recently after McCain questioned the success of a deadly military raid in Yemen.

This week, McCain appears on the cover of the Feb. 20 issue of New York magazine, where he candidly discusses operating in the Trump administration in a nearly 5,000-word profile by Gabriel Sherman, the magazine's national affairs editor.

In one particularly strongly worded exchange, McCain does not hold back on how he views the severity of alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election.

"The severity of this issue, the gravity of it, is so consequential because if you succeed in corrupting an election, then you've destroyed the foundation of democracy," McCain told Sherman. "So I view it with the utmost seriousness. I view it more seriously than a physical attack. I view it more seriously than Orlando or San Bernardino. As tragic as that was, the far-reaching consequences of an election hack are certainly far in excess of a single terrorist attack."

Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said later, would not stop "until the cost of going forward is too high." (As for why his Republican colleagues were not more vocal about demanding investigations of Trump's Russian connections, McCain told Sherman pithily: "I frankly don't know. It's not a chapter of 'Profiles in Courage.'")

In the wide-ranging profile, which covers everything from Supreme Court justice nominee Neil Gorsuch to Trump's poll numbers, McCain also defends the news media in relation to leaks that have come from the Trump administration.

"In democracies, information should be provided to the American people," McCain told Sherman. "How else are the American people going to be informed?"

The dramatic headline on the cover of the magazine - "McCain vs. Trump: Just how far will the senator go?" - is in many ways an oversimplification of their relationship, a facile understanding McCain himself pushes against throughout Sherman's piece. At one point, McCain dismisses the idea that he could be swayed by Democrats seeking to protest Trump's agenda.

"These are the same Democrats that shredded me in 2008," McCain told Sherman. "I get along with the Democrats, but please, I'm not their hero. They're trying to use us. We will work with them, but have no doubt, their agenda is not our agenda."

And McCain's criticisms of Trump could hurt Democrats in other ways, The Post's Dave Weigel notes in his analysis of the latest crop of McCain-centered headlines:

- - -

Pushed by their party's base, Senate Democrats have been moved from generally supporting Trump nominees to mostly opposing them. . . . But right now, progressives view the Democratic Party warily. They can ill afford a story line in which Republicans such as McCain (or Evan McMullin, or Joe Scarborough) are the real leaders of the opposition.

- - -

Still, McCain told Sherman he was not concerned about Trump's administration becoming an "authoritarian regime."

"I just don't think it's possible in our society," he said in the profile. "There's too many checks and balances. The danger is not Trump perverting our Constitution or taking too much power; the danger is the polarization of America."

The riddle of the century: Is John McCain pretending to be a Republican, or is he pretending not to be a Republican.

McCain is an attention whore, plain and simple. Anytime people are not paying enough attention to him, he defies his party, and the left cheers. He has been wrong on nearly every issue his entire career.

[Elim Garak]

The riddle of the century: Is John McCain pretending to be a Republican, or is he pretending not to be a Republican.

McCain is an attention whore, plain and simple. Anytime people are not paying enough attention to him, he defies his party, and the left cheers. He has been wrong on nearly every issue his entire career.

He's a maverick! Or senile.

[cubby]

http://www.hannity.com/articles/elec...-the-15464359/

Um, yeah, no. Not even the same thing - unless you haven't been paying attention. Trump has categorically attacked the media, blaming them for everything. He even said that any poll that wasn't for him was fake.

Obama's statement is not even in the same ballpark.

[Shaderas]

While the media should be held more accountable, it does serve a purpose. And declaring it an enemy of the American people is irresponsible. The republican senator stating that we should get our news directly from the President is ludicrous.

Personally, I try to mix where I get my news from a slightly right source and a slightly left source, so I can observe the bias and try to make my own decisions.

[Thepersona]

Trump is fairly normal, if more crude and potty mouthed? America has been doing terrible sins since the dawn of the 20th century.

Obama did evil but was eloquently spoken and I guess he did his evil that certain players liked, so its all good I suppose.

No theo. Trump is not normal. Acting like this is not normal for a president. Stop making false equivalencies beween them. For even bush (a shitty pres) accepted the court desicion when he lost, and didnt attack the media, an attack on free speech.
Dont try to normalize him, or use a fallacy.

[Theodarzna]

No theo. Trump is not normal. Acting like this is not normal for a president. Stop making false equivalencies beween them. For even bush (a shitty pres) accepted the court desicion when he lost, and didnt attack the media, an attack on free speech.
Dont try to normalize him, or use a fallacy.

One should attack the media when its in ones own self defense. Trump may be bad but the media is uniquely acting as an oppositional party to him, in a complete about face of the relationship the media had with the previous president.

[zenkai]

To anyone that has even spent a day in school it should be clear why this isn't comparable.


Media didn't sell out to the left; they all refused to endorse the alt-right.

It's not comparable because you're a partisan.