We all have seen the briefings, we all have heard the questions coming from esteemed journalists. We all have seen Trump’s response in multiple situations.

Yet, the left continues on with the notion that the daily Coronavirus briefings from President Trump are part of his “self-serving, bully pulpit”. And they are (GASP) terrified.

Donald Trump is ubiquitous. Everyone else in politics is a cipher compared to him. His dominance is overwhelming. And his pulpit is devoted to one thing and one thing only: himself.

So on March 13, he decided to shove Vice President Mike Pence off the stage and take over the daily coronavirus task force press briefing. He’s done one almost every day since then, including weekends, even when there is no news to report.

This whole process often takes two hours or more, most of it dominated by Trump bragging and blaming and sparring with the press over his administration’s response to the emergency. In his telling, his performance has been perfect. Reporters try to get explanations for his administration’s erratic, often contradictory actions and Trump attacks them, sometimes personally, for asking. After nearly a full month of this, it’s taken on the atmosphere of ritual humiliation.-Heather Digby Parton, Salon

“Digby” of Salon calls out Donald Trump in the daily COVID-19 briefings. Orange Man is bad again. Orange Man is a bully. Orange Man has pushed the poor Vice President (whose values, I promise, are way more Conservative than Trump’s) out of the way so HE could be center-stage. Mike Pence DOES still get to talk, by the way. According to this piece, he has been muzzled.

The Left is not satisfied. If there weren’t these daily briefings, they would be complaining that Trump spends too much time golfing at Mar-a-Lago and should be paying attention to what is going on in this country. Now, they are complaining that he is hogging the “bully pulpit” even “when there is nothing new to report“. He attacks the poor journalists and has created an atmosphere of “ritual humiliation”. Obama would have never done this!

But think about it. These reporters would have never dared to approach Barack Hussein Obama in the cavalier and disrespectful demeanor in which they have approached Trump at these briefings. The dialogue would be way different. I could see it now…

Mr. President, you look so tired. How are you holding up? Oh, so sorry, Mr. President. I know you and The First Lady want to go to Martha’s Vineyard for Spring Break. We are all have a sad that your family’s vacation plans have been put on hold because of this horrible pandemic.“

Or the journalists may have said something like this:

President Obama..thank you so much for your response on this pandemic so far! You are the epitome of Presidential and our world is a much better place because of you and your family!”

Your barf bag is in the seat back pocket in front of you…

There are several types of bullies in the world. Most of us learned this in grade school. There are the bruisers-those tough kids who will threaten to kick your ass for looking at them cross-eyed and then there’s the passive-aggressive, clean-cut looking, smart kids who like to throw around their worlds and screw with people. Pre-teen girls are great at this. They antagonize and then go crying to their mothers and the school administrators when you decide to fight back. Been there, done that back in the 80s. They were a miserable lot. Journalists, in essence, are preteen girls, by the way. Trump doesn’t mince his words and he knows exactly what they are doing. We also know that getting rid of a bully on your back involves standing up to one and calling said bully on their BS. Which is exactly what Trump does at these briefings and it is highly entertaining. The media has been a big machine that has vowed to take the President and any positive accomplishments he has made down since 2016. They have done so with misleading stories and headlines. And they are now doing so by their combative approach to questioning after these briefings.

These “journalists” who believed in the “Hope and Change” mantra peddled by Saul Alinsky-loving Barack Obama are angry with Trump for giving the American people “false hope”. They double-down on him for calling them out on their lack of hope. You know what? Reporters should be ashamed of some of these questions. They should be ashamed of how their combative approach looks to Americans. It does not appear that they are on a quest for any truth here. Does Trump have a huge ego? Yes. Can some people not get past his demeanor? Yes. Does he have a right to an opinion on a leading and dishonest question posed to him and his administration? Yes. Trump is not going to talk in circles or be the great orator that Obama was/is. Instead, he’s going to call a stupid question exactly that-a stupid question. He’s going to call out irresponsible reporting. He is going to call out bad intentions as he sees them. And if Trump seems hyper-vigilant about this, can you blame him? The bobbleheads have been at this for a good couple of years now. This is the perfect crisis and they are the perfect opportunists. The COVID-19 daily briefings provide an awesome daily jumping point for spinning a false narrative in an attempt to take down Trump in an election year.

But we know that Trump’s unorthodox use of the bully pulpit has made him the most omnipresent president in history. We’ll find out in November how that worked for him.”-Heather Digby Parton, Salon

And then, there’s Joe Biden. Yep. We certainly will see how the confused ramblings of his basement briefings will work for him, too.

Another trait of a bully is their uncanny talent for playing the victim. American journalists, in their desire for peer approval and “heroism” play the part of the victim and they execute this well. Unknown sources who “offended them” by calling COVID-19 a “Chinese Virus” or the “Kung Flu“. Why did an Arizona couple put fish tank cleaner in their soda? Because of Trump. They say they want “censorship” because Trump hurts their feelings. They want the American people to be as beaten-down, hurt and hopeless as they are and it shows. They are miserable human beings who will not rest until they succeed at this. The Big, Bad, Orange President is criticizing them for ignorant questions. He is a big, mean bully. But really, who are the true bullies in this picture? Antagonizing the President and the administration during these briefings in this critical time of unity is unprofessional, arrogant, self-serving and irresponsible. It is counter-productive to combatting the pandemic and to the spirit of the American people, most of us who have the resilience and hope that we will overcome this. The bullies in their suits with their microphones and behind their keyboards need to back the hell off.

Photo Credit: FlickR/Creative Commons/Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)/Cropped

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