Think Trump’s tweets are bad? Don’t be a hypocrite

TO Donald Trump’s supporters, he’s simply fighting back. If we keep reacting to him how we are, he’ll be in the White House until 2025, writes Caroline Marcus.

Donald Trump tackles CNN. Picture: Twitter/Donald Trump

THERE were only two fights that mattered over the weekend.

The first was the Battle of Brisbane which saw schoolteacher Jeff Horn and boxing legend Manny Pacquiao pommel the living daylights out of each other for money and the welterweight title.

But as if there wasn’t enough controversy over Horn’s victory in sporting circles, the political world was losing its collective marbles over another bout, one in which the President of the United States pretend “body slams” a man with a CNN logo superimposed on his head.

TEEN’S HEARTFELT TWEETS ABOUT BEING BROKE ON HIS FIRST DATE WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND GO VIRAL 

Today is Independence Day in America and to celebrate, Donald Trump is embroiled in a new battle with the media.

Fresh off the back of calling MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski “crazy” and accusing her of “bleeding badly from a facelift”, Trump tweeted a short clip of his appearance on a 2007 episode of WWE, showing him tackling someone in a business suit, with the footage doctored to put a giant CNN logo where his head should be.

Donald Trump on cover of mocked-up Time magazine; the fake cover was hanging in his golf clubs.

SPOILER ALERT: every fight on that show is completely staged for entertainment.

But that didn’t stop much of the media — both mainstream and social — from collectively wetting its pants.

From the ensuing meltdown, you’d think this was a far bigger deal than, oh say, an Irish magazine printing a front cover of Trump with a sniper target on his head in February.

Or a New York production of Julius Caesar depicting a character that looks just like Trump being graphically stabbed to death.

Or Hollywood star Johnny Depp asking when the last time an actor assassinated a president.

“It’s a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters,” a sombre official statement from CNN read. “We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his.”

It’s a shame that CNN hasn’t been doing its own job very well lately.

Last week, the network was forced to retract and issue an apology for a story linking Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci to a Russian-controlled investment fund, a report based on one anonymous source.

The broadcaster has since accepted the resignations of three senior journalists who’d worked on the story, including the head of its new investigations unit, after finding the report “did not meet CNN’s editorial standards.”

An earlier story for the network claimed FBI boss James Comey’s Senate testimony would contradict Trump’s claim that Comey had told him he wasn’t under investigation by the bureau.

In fact, Comey’s evidence did the opposite, corroborating Trump’s account.

Also last week, The New York Times had to print a correction after grossly overstating the number of intelligence agencies involved in an assessment that Russia had interfered with the US election.

Despite the amount of media hellbent on destroying Trump, seven months into his presidency, there is still no evidence he colluded with the Russians.

The joke is it was only four years ago these same news outlets ridiculed Republican nominee Mitt Romney for warning that Russia was the US’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.”

Back then, it was Romney who was “reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender” according to the same New York Times, whose editorial board dismissed his comments as displaying “a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics”.

Former president Barack Obama — who had been caught on a hot mic telling Vladimir Putin’s predecessor Dmitry Medvedev that the Russian president would enjoy “more flexibility” on missile defence matters after Obama’s re-election — accused Romney of being in a “Cold War mind warp”.

Hillary Clinton — yes the same woman still blaming the Russkies for her crushing election loss — brushed off Romney’s warnings as “dated” on CNN.

Many journalists and commentators aren’t above hyperbolic, hostile and highly personal attacks on the president, continually poking the bear then feigning surprise when he returns serve. Brzezinski and her Morning Joe co-host, fiance Joe Scarborough, have long used their show to suggest Trump has a mental illness, call him names, accuse him of “destroying the country” and even speculate that his wife wanted to leave him.

Of course, a world leader should rise above it all and none of this excuses his vicious tweets targeting Brzezinski in particular.

But while polling shows voters don’t like his tweeting, it never stopped them electing him in the first place.

Don’t forget, Trump was roundly criticised for saying Fox News host and GOP moderator Megyn Kelly she had “blood coming out of her wherever” during the election campaign.

And since when did vulgar behaviour unbefitting of the highest office ever stop a US president (cough, Bill Clinton) or even an Australian one, for that matter (cough, foul-mouthed Scores patron Kevin Rudd)?

To Trump’s supporters, he is simply fighting back against an almost comically bellicose media.

“The fact is the press has destroyed themselves because they went too far,” Trump told his cheering supporters during a speech for veterans hours before he posted the wrestling tweet.

“Instead of being subtle and smart, they used the hatchet and the people saw it right from the beginning.”

Public trust in our institution is already at an all-time low; just 17 per cent think the news media is “very accurate”, fewer than one in four think it is “moral”, according to a recent study by the American Press Institute.

If the media keeps crying wolf, it will only help Trump’s place in the White House until at least 2025.

Caroline Marcus is a journalist with Sky News.

@carolinemarcus