Media snit fit continues against Trump

Michael Goodwin:

When it comes to gathering and reporting the news, it is hard to beat the uncommon sense of legendary journalist Peter Kihss. I wrote several months ago that, as a young reporter, I learned from him that there are no such things as stupid questions to politicians, only stupid answers.

Now another Kihss gem applies, this time to the early media coverage of President Trump. More than three decades ago, Kihss and I were talking in the old newsroom of the New York Times when, after a frustrating day of seeing his story mangled by editors, he looked at me and said: Always remember, the job of the editor is to separate the wheat from the chaff — and publish the chaff in the newspaper.

I laughed, he didn’t, but his warning seemed especially prescient after Trump’s first Monday in the Oval Office. The new president delivered tons of wheat while most of the media was obsessed with the chaff.

The adage that actions speak louder than words is freely ignored when it comes to Trump. As part of their double standard, the ink-stained mob and broadcast confederates prefer to watch what he says instead of what he does.

Here’s Monday’s wheat: Trump signed an executive order freezing the federal workforce and another pulling the US out of the unpopular Asian trade deal. He met with manufacturing executives about forming an advisory panel on cutting job-killing taxes and regulations, then met with union leaders who emerged with praise for his approach to trade and his pledge to modernize America’s infrastructure.

Nearly all the union leaders, who represent carpenters, construction workers, plumbers and sheet-metal workers, endorsed Hillary Clinton, yet they called their meeting with Trump “incredible” and gave him a round of applause for spiking the Asian trade deal.

Richard Trumpka, head of the AFL-CIO, issued a statement hailing the decision, as well as Trump’s plan to reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement.

It was a jobs-jobs-jobs day, one that cut across partisan lines so American workers could benefit. The day had the added advantage of Trump keeping his campaign promises, which is not exactly a regular occurrence in Washington, so that alone should have been big news.

To top it off, Trump met with congressional leaders of both parties in a bid to build relationships of the kind President Obama scorned. That, too, could have been fodder for a story of contrasts, yet that meeting produced the chaff the media really wanted.

“Trump repeats an election lie,” the Times declared, a glaring accusation about the president insisting to the congressional leaders that illegal voters gave Clinton her popular-vote victory.
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There is more.

First off it is not a lie to say something the NY Times disagrees with.  It is a dispute over whether or not illegal voting took place and to what extent it happened.  Because the Democrats have done their best to block voter integrity laws the NY Times cannot know for sure that there was no illegal voting.  There is some evidence that there has been illegal voting, in fact, people have been prosecuted for it.

At any rate, Trump called their bluff on the issue by saying there will be an intensive investigation of vote fraud.

And while the media was obsessing about that they missed the fact that Trump has had a good day and is taking more votes from the Democrat base in the process.

The media is really hurting its own credibility with its hostile take on what Trump says.  If they are not going to be fair, fewer people are going to want their product and they will be left with the shrinking base of the liberal Democrats.