What does the president imply when he cries out “fake news”?
He means that the news media have made up a story about him: that the story is fiction, something someone dreamed up out of whole cloth. The report is an “imaginary story” with no factual basis in reality, in other words.
Now what does that tell us about Trump’s knowledge of journalism? It is not a profession in which he could have found success. Since he has such a fuzzy sense of where the line is drawn between truth and fiction, he could never have achieved a reputation for honest reporting.
His gigantic ego would prevent him from down-sizing his exaggerated use of superlatives and frantic denials to manageable bite-size chunks of reliable information and facts, otherwise known as the truth.
Trump appears contemptuous of the reliable and demonstrable distinctions between falsehoods and truth and hence could never be depended upon to speak or write truthfully. His first year in office has demonstrated his ignorance and weird Twitter double-speak over and over again.
He seems oblivious to the fact that real journalism has very high standards, that it requires a college degree and hands on practical experience working with skilled veteran reporters.
Journalists routinely practice double-checking of sources and even triple-checking of facts for the most important stories: multiple reliable sources are required that go well beyond just a rumor or gossip sheet. Reliable journalists do not make up stories but report their findings.
There is also a huge difference between subjective opinionated venting and objective fact-based writing. As huge a difference as there is, Trump does not seem able to grasp the fundamental distinction. He has no moral compass, no truthful center with which to control his narcissism, paranoia, and Machiavellian duplicity.
Instead, he favors substituting his own subjective judgment for approving or disapproving of news articles: what he likes he approves; what he doesn’t like he calls “fake news”.
Even here, he doesn’t understand the difference between disliking a news report and insisting it is “fake”, made up, and therefore of no further consequence. Meanwhile, news reporters have been educating the American people about the inconsistencies of Trumps’ behavior and beliefs.
For the president to try and wave off a year’s worth of in-depth investigative reporting in the age of the Internet, is as pathetic as it is alarming. Has the man no sense of decency?
Certainly, anyone is free to criticize an irksome article for its point of view; if a person (including the president) has additional facts to enlighten others, he can cite them.
When Trump doesn’t bother to do either—criticize rationally or offer new factual material—he is left looking like a spoiled brat throwing a temper tantrum. “I’m the greatest but I can’t get all the papers in the country to agree with me!”
There are times when reporters merely attribute to him certain well-known remarks he has made, which he then denies—and yet there is often video available showing him making those remarks!
He has become lost in Alice in Wonderland, depending heavily upon derisive and insulting language to put people down rather than cultivating thoughtful and rational responses.
To claim the reporters are “faking the news” when there is incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, is worse than egotism and narcissism—it has the smell of arrogance with which despotism begins.
He is deliberately attacking the free press, a fundamental blessing of the American nation!
Of course, Trump can’t bring himself to simply say “it’s not true” because any further discussion would soon make clear who is factual and who is covering up.
That’s why he relies so frequently upon a short two-word phrase that he can utter quickly and dismissively before he is forced to field any probing questions for which he has no real answers: “Fake news, fake question, fake you, bye!”
What is Trump really saying about himself when he throws out the term “fake news” so indiscriminately?
He is saying: “You caught me in a lie. I have no better response since the truth is not on my side.”
He means: “I often make up excuses and insults when I have nothing of substance to say. You see, I regularly deal in half-truths and innuendos when my critics make points I cannot answer.”
The ridiculous arrogance is bad enough; narcissistic personalities seem to have a whole range of questionable traits and poor-judgment issues. (He would make an excellent case for psychiatric study were it not for the fact he’s the president.)
Yet beyond the clown-like buffoonery of a megalomaniac, this particular kind of unrepentant conceit is especially dangerous. It represents an embryonic step that typically precedes the emergence of a dictatorship: such as the attacks on a free press by Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler.
None of them could abide an unfettered press for obvious reasons. The Nazis swiftly seized control of newspapers. Trump is now launching his first tentative attacks upon a free press–a stalwart guardian of our liberties–with outrageous accusations and falsehoods.
The shift to the right that leaves the democratic arena must start somewhere: and this is, historically, one of its best-known- and most infamous starting points: attack the freedom of the press.
If ever in the future the United States government starts down the slippery slope toward dictatorship, future historians will search out and mark the date the slide began as coinciding exactly with the administration of Donald John Trump.
When Trump cries “Fake news” he is telling the world the truth is not on his side. He long ago decided that his only recourse would be to try and damage news-reporting through insult and smears.
A man who has so little respect for America’s democratic freedom of the press–a man who fails to recognize the high journalistic standards reporters set for themselves–is no longer a representative of the people acting on his pledge to defend the Constitution and its freedoms.
At times he behaves more like a dictator-in-the-making than a president carrying out his sworn oath to defend individual and institutional liberties, including freedom of the press.
His unbridled arrogance has grown especially dangerous because he has taken the first step on the path away from American democracy and toward controlling the press with dictatorial pretensions.
We should not be fooled by Trump’s repetitious cry of “fake news!” His response betrays better than anything else a fundamental flaw in his character as well as a gaping hole in his knowledge of the responsibilities of the presidency: his inability to distinguish truth from fiction.
What we see is a grotesquely swollen ego unable to handle even the smallest criticism gracefully and thoughtfully. We see repeatedly in the president’s actions a stubborn unwillingness to treat journalists decently and their investigative findings with the appreciation and respect they deserve.
He has apparently not yet learned another valuable lesson, that facts also are quite stubborn things; they do not go away because of narcissistic wishful thinking and bombastic fallacious accusations.
The next time Trump cries “Fake news” the American people must hear what he is really saying:
“You have caught me in a lie. I can have no other response since the truth is not on my side.”
