It is a tradition in the United States for the losing party to concede victory to the victor after the presidential elections. Hillary Clinton, who was Donald Trump’s opponent from the Democratic Party has already done so. So, why am I asking the press (most of it) to concede defeat in US election 2016 to Donald Trump? Because clearly, the 3 main candidates in the just concluded US presidential elections were Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and …. The mainstream press. Yes the mainstream press.
From day one, the mainstream press was against Donald Trump’s presidency. Some of them showed their cards early, while others decided to take Donald Trump’s presidential race as a ‘yuge joke’. In fact, Huffington Post confined political stories of Donald Trump to their entertainment section! Ariana, why na!?
A lot of media houses kept belting out anti-Trump rhetoric like the conveyor belt of a canned baloney factory belting out bologna.
Even conservative Fox News initially didn’t want to align with Trump, and had to only after a series of clashes with the conservative candidate.
The New York Times was scathing and tried several times to publish investigative stories which they claimed would put an end to Donald Trump’s presidency. While publishing investigative stories is good and welcome, there seemed to be an extra bitterness against Trump in those stories.
I am afraid New York Times has lost Donald Trump because of that. The Donald was a always a big fan of the Times, and wrote in his book The Art Of The Deal that the New York Times is the most influential institution in the world. As a result of that Oprah-like endorsement, I and many others grew to like the Ney York Times. But I am not sure he would say such about the Times today.
Yes, the press has the license to support whomever they want to support, but they are not to let that get in the way of objective reporting, which is what they did. When one looked up Donald Trump on Google, almost all the stories would be negative stories poking fun at him. And whenever Trump had a positive story, they would find a negative way to spin it.
Before the first debate, you would see articles like, ‘How Trump should win in the first debate’ written by his critics. In such articles they would advice him to be calm and ‘presidential’. Then when Hillary Clinton comes out not calm and blazing, they would say she won because she was all fired up and ready to go, while Trump was ‘dull and uninspiring’.
I know several people who stopped watching CNN because of such obscene double standards. When I tried to find out why they stropped, the would tell me of instances when a CNN reporter would ask a voter about whether they support Trump or Clinton. And when the voter would say Trump and begin to give his reasons, they would cut them off. The media coverage of Donald Trump was shamelessly biased. But the press failed woefully, because the US voter wasn’t fooled, and showed that on November 8.
That is the reason why after the press would release opinion polls’ showing Trump was down by double digits 9their favorite anti-Trump phrase, they would send camera’s into Trump rallies and instead see lines of people that stretched very long distances. They would see thousands who were not fooled by their naked propaganda. The press would then tell us that most of those coming to Trump rallies were people who were just curious to hear Trump speak.
So many heads of my colleagues were buried in the sand that they couldn’t see a failing strategy that was staring them in the face. What they failed to put into calculation is that propaganda that doesn’t have any grounds whatsoever in reality is already a failure. Trump was just right when he kept saying that the elections were rigged because of the behavior of the press.
Of course, by ‘The Press’ we don’t mean every press organization, but a whole lot of them. Their attitude was stomach churning, and still is. The debates were an avenue that showed the American people how desperate the pro Clinton press was to pull Trump down.
I remember one moderator who was asking Hillary Clinton a question when it was her turn, and he started with the phrase, ‘We know you mean well, but…’. Please, when did it become the job of moderators to determine which candidate means well or not in a presidential debate?! The ‘impartial moderator’ might as well have held up an anti Trump placard.
Donald Trump was right when he said during the second debate that he was debating against 2 more people (the ‘impartial moderators’) besides Clinton. It was a shame, and it didn’t help Hillary Clinton in any way. It just deepened the resolve of the American voter to hand the victory to Trump, and you can see the size of his Electoral College votes.
Let me also say that I came out off this election with a greater respect for the American voter than I ever had. The way they sifted through all the lies the press told against Trump is truly remarkable. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against Hillary Clinton. In fact, from my calculations, if she should run again in 8 years time, she would win the presidency. What I am against is the way her fans in the press got blinded by their hatred for Trump, and in the end, believed their own propaganda.
After the election results came out showing that Donald Trump had won, Hillary Clinton wasted little time in congratulating The Donald and conceding defeat. But the press? No such thing.
the funny but disapointing Saturday Night Live (SNL) is still in full anti Trump election mode. In their last show, they made fun of Donald Trump’s habit of tweeting. In other words, according to them, he should stop using his favorite medium to express himself. Who gave SNL the right to deny an American citizen the right to express himself just because they don’t like his face/hair?
The attack on Trump’s penchant for tweeting follows other abhorrent portrayals of trump by the show during the campaign, and is really distasteful. Hillary Clinton has moved on. The American press should to. What the press risks doing if it doesn’t move on is to further drive a wedge between the professional relationship that should exist between a serving president and the Fourth Estate. I hope they wouldn’t begin to complain bitterly when he decides not to hold press conferences, and to send out all his announcements via his personal Twitter account.
I hope they wouldn’t cry foul, because they are really pushing it. Donald Trump makes their ratings go up, and they need the kind of ratings only he can give them.
In an America in which the mainstream press is in a struggle for survival, the least they can give Trump is a fair hearing. At this point, they are not. They seem to be in a collective denial. But as Kellyanne Conway said recently. ‘He is your president, how about that’?
Weather they do or not, Trump has won
The press weren’t happy with the development that’s why