12 hours ago
‘Bad and sick people': Donald Trump cries ‘fake news' again as media reports on Pentagon intelligence
At the turn of the century, or thereabouts, our world entered its 'creep' era.
Hindsight tells us Bill Clinton was the harbinger. 'Mega-famous man who is obviously, palpably creepy, but thrives anyway because he has a legion of fans whose sunk emotional costs compel them to excuse pretty much any indiscretion' has become an entire genre of human being. Bill walked so bizarre mediocrities like Russell Brand could run.
(You can insert your own, more colourful verbs there, should you wish.)
But the creep era is not just about lecherousness. The word has many uses.
There's mission creep, like we saw in Iraq, where the effort to neutralise non-existent weapons of mass destruction morphed into a decade of glacial 'nation building'.
There is bracket creep, the tax problem everyone acknowledges but nobody fixes.
There's Internet Brain creep, a serious disorder best illustrated by the cautionary life of balding fecal stain Andrew Tate.
And now we also have definition creep. Particularly insidious and frustrating, that one, for those among us who still think words should mean things (me, my primary school teacher Mrs Wright, whoever is in charge of compiling the Oxford dictionary, and surprisingly few others, it would seem).
Consider, as an example, the word 'woke'. It began its life as the successor to 'political correctness'; as a descriptor for the political left's weirdest overreaches. It still masquerades as that. But the word is now used, all too frequently and lazily, to mock and undermine anything to the left of oh, say, Pauline Hanson.
That is definition creep. The bucket of things that could be described as 'woke' has kept growing, and growing, and growing, to the point that it now includes even the blandest, most conventionally progressive of stances.
I do not have a problem with the Aboriginal flag flying atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I love the Maori verse of my country's national anthem. Illegal immigrants should get due process under the law, like anyone else, before they are deported. We probably should have more women serving as major CEOs. If someone is born biologically male, but ends up identifying as female, I don't give the slightest s***.
For these incredibly boring opinions, which place me smack bang in the middle of modern Western society, I could now be labelled irredeemably woke.
Let's go in the other direction for the sake of balance. Fascism! The word has a meaning. Yet it's applied to almost everything Donald Trump does.
Enforcing America's immigration laws? Fascism. Firing the inspectors-general inside the US government? Fascism. Trying to implement policy changes through executive fiat rather than legislation, which is something every other president in living memory has done? Fascism!
There's a 'boy who cried wolf' dynamic here, don't you think? If you scream 'fascism' every day, no one will listen to you when something actually fascistic happens.
Something like ........ a sustained, deliberate effort to discredit any news coverage that strays beyond the sycophantic and flirts with seeking accountability.
Which points us to perhaps the single greatest victim of definition creep in recent years: the term 'fake news'.
It sprang from the American presidential election in 2016, and originally referred to literal fake news, i.e. foreign actors concocting entirely fictional stories, and making them go viral, in an effort to influence voters.
And what does it mean now? Any news coverage Donald Trump or his followers don't like. Even when the coverage is accurate. Simple as that.
The latest example concerns Mr Trump's strikes on Iran, which targeted three nuclear enrichment sites. In the immediate aftermath of those strikes, the President claimed, 'Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated'. That was echoed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said the strikes 'took away Iran's ability to create a nuclear bomb'.
All of which may be true. You and I, sitting on our bums in Australia, don't know. Nor did Mr Trump when he uttered that unambiguous quote above. It will take time for the American intelligence community to reach anything approaching a certain conclusion.
A couple of days after Mr Trump's triumphalist announcement, multiple American media outlets, led by CNN and The New York Times, revealed an initial assessment from US military intelligence at the Pentagon, which said the strikes had actually left most of Iran's nuclear infrastructure intact.
Those reports were accurate. They conveyed a real intelligence assessment compiled by Mr Trump's own Pentagon. The White House did not dispute the assessment's existence, nor its source, nor the idea that its contents had been characterised correctly.
The CIA later offered a sunnier view on the effect of Mr Trump's strikes, and the President himself cited Israeli intelligence to suggest the Pentagon's assessment was wrong.
But again, the key point here is: neither CNN nor The New York Times concocted the story out of nowhere. They correctly summarised the Pentagon's initial assessment, which did not fit Mr Trump's narrative.
For that, both outlets were subjected to a deluge of abuse.
'FAKE NEWS CNN STRIKES AGAIN,' said Ms Leavitt.
'The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program.
'Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.'
'We just caught the Failing New York Times, working with Fake News CNN, cheating again!' said Mr Trump.
'They tried to demean the great work our B-2 pilots did, and they were wrong in doing so. These reporters are just BAD AND SICK PEOPLE.
'You would think they would be proud of the great success we had, instead of trying to always make our Country look bad. TOTAL OBLITERATION!'
At another point, speaking to reporters, Mr Trump again accused the media of demeaning the efforts of the American pilots.
'They put their lives on the line, and then they have real scum, real scum, come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be,' he said.
'It should be the opposite. You should make them heroes and heroines.'
Heroines! So woke, Donald.
One last little rant, here, against CNN's national security reporter.
'Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out 'like a dog',' said Mr Trump.
'Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn't have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!'
Rightio. So. Putting aside the fact that the President of the United States, amid a potentially catastrophic conflagration in the Middle East, is spending his time posting unhinged critiques of TV news reporters on social media, as though he has nothing more important to do. And the fact that everyone just accepts this as fine and normal behaviour. Putting that aside.
Ms Bertrand reported nothing false. And as penance for her crime, which was to convey the news accurately, the most powerful man on Earth, who leads what is supposed to be a liberal democracy, says she should be 'thrown out like a dog'.
