We know a few things about President Trump’s past few days: On Friday, he announced his national emergency at the White House. That afternoon, he flew to Florida for a weekend at Mar-a-Lago. According to White House pool reports, Trump arrived Saturday at Trump International Golf Club at about 8:40 a.m. and left just before 3 p.m.
Sometime on Saturday night, it appears, he took in some media:
Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019
THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2019
On the comedic merits of last night’s edition of “Saturday Night Live,” we’ll side with the president. Alec Baldwin’s cold open of Trump’s Friday appearance at the White House suffered from the much-discussed pitfall of Trump satire: It’s hard to make fun of a fellow who does that all by his lonesome. Watch the original on C-SPAN instead of the SNL version (below). Tragicomic always beats comic.
Credit SNL for sufficiently rankling the president to the point that he tweeted about a comedy show in his leisure time, an apt way of reflecting the urgency of this particular national emergency.
As for Trump’s tweeted attack on the media, those are, of course, nothing new and something disturbing — still, after all these years. Though Trump has never been one for precision in language, his reference to “retribution” comes straight out of Dictatorship 101. Definition: “punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act.”
That’s not all: There was a time when Trump insisted that his use of the term “enemy of the people” to describe media outlets was somehow an act of discipline. See these tweets from last fall:
CNN and others in the Fake News Business keep purposely and inaccurately reporting that I said the “Media is the Enemy of the People.” Wrong! I said that the “Fake News (Media) is the Enemy of the People,” a very big difference. When you give out false information - not good!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2018
Check out tweets from last two days. I refer to Fake News Media when mentioning Enemy of the People - but dishonest reporters use only the word “Media.” The people of our Great Country are angry and disillusioned at receiving so much Fake News. They get it, and fully understand!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2018
With his Sunday morning whine that “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Trump appears to be bailing on this fine point. The Erik Wemple Blog draws no conclusions from all of this. We don’t believe, necessarily, that the walls are closing in; we don’t believe, necessarily, that it shows that the president is more unhinged than ever; we don’t believe he is more isolated than ever. It could be merely that it’s just another dreadful day in the life of Trump.
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