Trump—the anti-journalist president who jokes about beating up journalists

By SJ Otto

Once again we are treated to the ramblings of a thug-like buffoon who pretends to be our “President” Donald Trump. Trump was at a rally to shore up support for Republicans and his words were followed with cheers from a crowd of brain dead Montanans.
Montana House Republican Greg Gianforte body slammed Ben Jacobs, of the Guardian. Trump said Gianforte is "my guy." Trump said this at a time when Saudi Arabia has kidnapped and assassinated a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.   .

It is one thing to go around claiming the media provides us “fake news,” but we don’t need to give politicians a green light to physically attack journalists for doing their job.[1] This seems to be a dangerous time to be a journalist.

Saudi Arabia has a terrible human rights record. The country is similar to Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea and has a lot of the same problems, such as being a government that uses heredity to determine its leaders. The people of Saudi Arabia are not starving, which is one of the few differences. Saudi Arabia is an oil rich kingdom and the US sells them lots of weapons. On the other hand North Korea is a cold war relic that is still considered a US enemy. The US mainstream news media makes a lot of noise over North Korea’s human rights record. The same news media completely ignores the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia.  

Trump and his ilk have been slow to criticize Saudi Arabia. They now have to decide how they are going to deal with a staunch ally that clearly has murdered a dissident journalist and yet Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he told President Donald Trump to give Saudi Arabia "a few more days to complete" an investigation into the Khashoggi murder. According to CNBC Pompeo says that Saudi officials told him during a visit to the kingdom this week that "they will conduct a complete, thorough investigation of all of the facts surrounding Mr. Khashoggi, and that they will do so in a timely fashion."

To have the government of Saudi Arabia investigate its own crimes is absurd. It’s like having a fox investigate its own crime of stealing eggs from the hen house. But the US, under Trump and war mongering leaders such as Pompeo, are forced to pretend they are dealing with a civilized nation that follows the democratic rules of a Western country.

No US president in modern times would have an easy time of trying to defend all the trade and military deals with such a despicable government. But Trump’s constant haranguing of the US press has back fired on him. Trump has come out looking like an anti-press, anti-journalist thug. He can now be seen as a governing, thinned skin politician caught up in a murder cover-up.

Our idiot president has shown that he has no respect for the rules of law when it comes to those who might expose him as the buffoon that he is. I wonder if Trump would find it funny if I encouraged someone take a shot at him?

Pix from The Federalist Papers.

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[1] I can add to this that I am a journalist, so this applies to me.