Like many Americans, I arrived at the office on November 9 with what felt like a terminal hangover. This wasn’t the result of too much liquor—a definite temptation the night before, as Hillary Clinton’s supposedly impregnable margin melted away and the anchors on MSNBC and CNN developed a fresh set of worry lines. No, this was another sort of hangover: a stunned attempt to absorb a political toxin, compared to which absinthe (or, hell, gasoline) was mere mother’s milk. Trump had won. This childish monster of self-regard would be moving into the White House, possibly with the bronze bust of his own head that decorated his Atlanta campaign office. The weeks since his victory have offered little in the way of reassurance. His farcical Cabinet appointments, his flagrant cronyism, his refusal to divest himself of his business empire—which, as the constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe has pointed out, makes him a virtual “emoluments magnet”—are all deeply discouraging.
Hence our January cover, a likeness of the pouting president behind bars. Trump has surely bent or broken the law with sufficient frequency to merit some quality time in stir: the Trump University litigation alone would probably have earned him a fraud conviction if he hadn’t settled. But the cover can be taken figuratively, too, as an image of containment. Whatever the Russians or the rebellious electors do, Trump is likely to occupy the Oval Office. Damage control will be a necessity for the next four years. So will resistance, in all its many-splendored forms.
I am watching the media's response to Trump's "victory" with much interest.
There are those journalists who want to treat him like every other president before him, those who want to curry favor with him and perhaps increase their own ratings/circulation, and those who have decided that this is not an ordinary transfer or power and that their job is to be part of the resistance and fight Trump every step of the way.
I am just a blogger, but I am firmly in that last category.
Simply put Trump did NOT legitimately win this election, Trump is NOT equipped to do this job, and Trump must NOT be allowed to function without intense media scrutiny.
We know that news outlets which attempt to hold Trump accountable are going to be severely punished by his administration and supporters, so WE need to support them through subscriptions and with our patronage.
Donald Trump wants to kill journalism in this country.
It is up to us to see that he fails.
Source http://ift.tt/2j0lZc2
