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America becoming reality show

By Jules Witcover - Syndicated Columnist | Jul 5, 2018

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump’s greatest political trick in his first term may be his success in dominating our public discourse with lies and distortions while leading the discrediting of the constitutionally protected freedom of the press.

At every opportunity, even as the Fourth Estate has now endured gun violence in an Annapolis. Md., newsroom, this president has missed no opportunity to cast mainstream American journalism as the practitioner of “fake news.”

In truth it is Trump himself who has been the most transparent and consistent poisoner of the flow of information to the public concerning the conduct of our politics and governance. He runs the country as if he were still starring in “The Apprentice,” with its mandate to shout “You’re fired!” to every idea or individual alien to him.

The world of legitimate journalism increasingly finds itself in a defensive crouch, attempting to fend off his assault through extensive fact-checking and reporting on his whoppers large and small, significant or ludicrous.

Among his favorite lies of late are his contention that immigrants are pouring over our southern border in record numbers while the flow has been diminishing and his allegation that the Democrats favor “open borders.”

Of the humanitarian fiasco of forced separation of immigrant parents from their small children at the border, he first said there was nothing he could do and called on Congress to act. Next he said Republicans in Congress were “wasting their time” trying to do so. Finally, he issued an executive order of uncertain effectiveness to end family separation, and the turmoil festers.

In the wake of his Singapore summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, he continues to say the threat of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula has been removed through his diplomacy, contrary to his own intelligence community’s report that the North Korean nuclear buildup continues and grows.

In maintaining and fueling his otherwise broad-brush attack on the nation’s independent news media, Trump has effectively rallied ultraconservative news outlets, with Fox News as his principal ally and commentator Sean Hannity as chief propagandist for his administration.

Some other Fox journalists, notably Chris Wallace, the host of the cable network’s Sunday news and talk show, strive for some objectivity, and so do some prominent print outlets like the Wall Street Journal, but reporters in both run against the dominant political favoritism of their employers.

Trump’s promotion of the concept of “fake news” is a despicable tactic inimical to the very pursuit of obtaining and spreading truth as an anchor of public responsibility in our American democratic process.

In that sense, Donald Trump’s free-wheeling and destructive efforts to discredit our mainstream news media while manufacturing his own “alternative facts” is akin to his self-serving campaign to discredit the FBI that supposedly is a bulwark of our law-enforcement apparatus.

As our deservedly esteemed Justice Department presses on with its investigation into Russian election meddling, Trump remains under a dark cloud of suspicion, even as he is weighing the appointment of a new Supreme Court justice likely to give conservatives a six-to-three dominance in the court.

Democrats cringe and wail at the prospect that a president under such a cloud will be left to make that critical choice. They plead, probably fruitlessly, that the Senate delay any confirmation until after the November midterm elections that could give the Democrats control and possibly reject Trump’s nominee.

In all this, Trump continues to conduct the government like a television reality show – creating a distorted reality that the nation’s fact-based news business struggles to make sense of.

Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.

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