February 2017
The Trump regime is under attack from “Fake News”. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer tells us so. White House “Counsellor” Kellyanne Conway tells us so. The holder of the most powerful office in the world tells us so. But is it so, or is that Fake News?
The internet is a great source of Fake News. It is also rife with actual facts. I looked up the five most shared, reacted to and/or commented upon political Fake News stories on Facebook in 2016. They were as follows:
- “Obama Signs Executive Order Banning the Pledge of Allegiance in Schools Nationwide”
- “Pope Francis Shocks the World, Endorses Donald Trump for President; Releases Statement”
- “Trump Offering Free One-Way Tickets to Africa & Mexico for Those Who Wanna Leave America”
- “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide”
- “RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE to Reunite And Release Anti Donald Trump Album
My take on those examples, and from my review of the rest of the top 50 Facebook-circulated 2016 Fake News pieces: Trump supporters take a backseat to no one in supporting the Fake News industry. Fake News is a problem, but it is not a bigger problem for Donald Trump than others.
That is not to say that Donald Trump is not also the victim of other disorders of our modern media. However ill-considered and ham-handedly executed, a temporary suspension of entry privileges to the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries is probably not fairly characterized as a “Muslim ban” any more than a 15-cm snowfall on a minus 6 Celsius January day in Toronto can be fairly described as (your choice here) “Snow-mageddon” and/or “an extreme cold emergency”, but that is how the media gets our attention these days. And no one knows that better than The Donald himself: everything he speaks of is “bigly yuge”, except perhaps his hands. He gives as good as he takes on this one as well.
Where he is inordinately plagued is in the area of satire. No politician has been the subject of such unrelenting and scathing satire as Donald Trump. It is true that Saturday Night Live has mocked every Presidential candidate that has run and President that has taken office during its 40+ year run, but never so consistently and savagely, and never without some tangible undercurrent of affection. And the same is true of every other late night satirical news show.
It is easy to say (as Trump and his supporters do) that this is simply a reflection of the media’s liberal bias, but George W. Bush was almost certainly a more categorical right wing President than Donald Trump and even he received a more measured reception. Perhaps the root of this unrelenting satirical pillaging lies in the nature of the Trump Administration itself. Satire is a tool through which one expresses frustration with individuals and/or ideas with which one disagrees by knowingly and openly exaggerating those aspects with which one takes issue. Donald Trump is simple and narcissistic, but nowhere near as simple and narcissistic as Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him on SNL. Through satire, opponents can tell Trump how they make them feel without pretending that that is the complete truth of what he is.
Trump takes a different approach. Faced with a society that feels to him like one in which law and order has broken down, he reports to the American public that the per capita national murder rate is at a 47-year high. Faced with uneasiness about the undisputed legitimacy of a Presidency that was not supported by a majority of the voters, he reports on 3-5 million illegal votes (that presumably all went against him). Channeling xenophobic fears, he cautions Americans about unreported terrorist attacks all over the world, while his “Counsellor” makes three references to three news outlets over four days to the “Bowling Green massacre” as a domestic example of one such under-reported event.
None of these reports can be supported by any facts. Given the resources available to the President and his staff, their assertion is at best gross negligence and more likely the deliberate circulation of falsehoods. Unlike satire, these expressions of the feeling of Donald Trump and his supporters are dressed up as fact, not openly acknowledged as play. They are not an outlet for frustration; they are a demonstration of and an excuse for ignorance.
