On this President’s Day Week, who remembers what is the actual birthday of the Father of Our Country? It is February 22, and Abraham Lincoln’s is February 12. In the good old days the nation celebrated each separately, giving these two great Americans their respective due. Relentless “Jim Crow” efforts to rehabilitate the Confederacy led eventually to the diminishment of Lincoln by way of consolidating the two, and making a single date a holiday that, omg, could even justify celebrating the treasonous regime of Trump.
Or, the second-worst president ever. That would be John Tyler, the 10th president, 1841-1845, who became president upon the death of William Henry Harrison and went on to seek and win election to the Confederate House of Representatives in 1861, thereby becoming a pro-slavery sworn enemy of the U.S.
That puts both Tyler and Trump in categories of infamy by themselves.
It’s been barely three weeks since the inauguration of Joe Biden as president of the U.S., and the reversion of the regrettable Donald Trump to private citizen status. Yet the major media has not been able to resist the very first opportunity that Trump has provided — a statement attacking fellow Republican Mitch McConnell — to explode Trump back into the headlines replete with his insults and ugly demeanor. Please! It was so peaceful when that disgusting figure was briefly out of the news, but now he’s back. Is this going to be the process going forward? Is Trump going to be back in the news on a daily basis despite being mercifully and permanently banned from Twitter and Facebook?
For the love of God, he is now a private citizen who has so traumatized the U.S. population for so long that we require a break. Seriously. Keep him out of the news except to report that he has been indicted, subpoenaed or otherwise subjected to the functions of the U.S. criminal justice system. In time, that will generate plenty of news, although even then it will not require extensive Trump face time.
There is little doubt that the major media played a huge role in the rise of Trump as a presidential candidate in the year leading up to the 2016 election, and many decision makers in the media admitted it and justified it on grounds of the ratings they enjoyed. So, will the narrow slice of the American electorate that still worships Trump now be given a chance to celebrate their hero once again thanks to the ratings he’s again providing? At this rate, the future of Trump in GOP politics will quickly become the sum and substance of the media coverage of matters leading into the next election cycle.
More than a ban on Trump holding future public office, there needs to be a ban on his domination of the media. In that spirit, we genuinely regret the ink we are wasting on talking about him here.