Donald Trump: Bigot/Racist/Sexist or Just Plain Old Totally Unprepared for Elected Office  

(Source: theblaze.com)

The news cycle is constantly dominated by Trump and his horrendous mashing of the English language into insensibility and even worse mangling of ideas that apparently make-up his policy proposals, but is it possible that we do not fully understand this man on account of the media’s rush to paint the candidates in terms that promote the greatest arguments among supports and therefore ratings?

(Source: MSNBC)

We’re all very familiar with Trump’s remarks about the need to punish women who have abortions when Chris Mathews drilled Trump on his show on the matter,here, resulting in Trump’s pausing for thought just before dropping the bomb. We also remember his remarks about Fox News host Megyn Kelly loosing blood  or his mocking of a disabled reporter at a campaign rally or wore still, his insisting that a judge of Mexican descent, born and raised in Indiana, USA, would be incapable of fairly executing his judicial charge in matters related to Trump because “he is Mexican.”

Even more familiar in the minds of news-goers the country over is the presser event of all presser events: the one in which Trump announced his candidacy for president in which he enunciated a major plank in his campaign platform: building the now famous wall between the US and Mexico—at their expense of course—to keep out those rapists, murders and various other criminally oriented folks, people that Mexico is apparently in no short supply and has a greater concentration of than, say, our own country.

(Source: newyorkdailynews.com)

These remarks and the phone-book’s thickness worth of one Trump fumble after another may actually work to hinder our understanding of this man, either to his political detriment or to the detriment of our understanding of those who run for office.

Apart from Trump’s uncanny ability to say unintelligent things to get attention and stir up the news cycle, the media often rushes to the microphone, the minute the Donald sneezes, and frames the latest of his missteps in terms of argument and attack, which are good for ratings and entertainment value but are utterly destructive of the public debate and insure that polarization persists and that no disagreeing persons are listening to one another. 

For instance, Trump was asked to explain his comments about women and punishment for abortions after his now infamous interview with Chris Mathews, in which Trump appeared to have succumbed to Mathew’s prosecutorial style of rapid-fire questioning. Trump did not seem to handle that type of questioning very well at all, a type of questioning style with which he is no doubt unfamiliar as we have heard many times: he is not a politician.

But, when he responded to questions about his comments that women should be punished for having an abortion, saying that he did not mean to suggest that but doctors performing those abortions should be the ones punished, the media pounced, suggesting he flip-flopped or “walked back” his comments

Never mind the fact that punishing someone for adjusting their positions, either up or down upon acquiring new information, will insure in our leaders intellectual inflexibility and an unwillingness to change course on a bad idea, but isn’t it just as possible that Trump, the notoriously information anemic candidate, did not in fact mean what he appears to have unwittingly said under the pressure of the camera and lights during the Chris Mathews interview?

We should certainly at least consider the possibility since his after-interview statements seem to suggest that he may have misspoke. After all, Trump has not been shy about some of the other outrageous statements he has double and tripled down on. 

But, the media frenzy is not new. Trump experienced the same media routing when he made overtures to Vladimir Putin, suggesting that the international community and the United States would be more stable and prosperous if the US engaged with and not shunned its adversaries, in fact echoing Obama. Nevertheless, the accusations issued forth, ranging the gamut from the suggestion that Trump may be an agent of the Russian government or that he may be a patsy in a Kremlin scheme, in which he is used to advance Russian interests and to influence the US election.

Source: Cleveland.com)

The truth is Trump is no politician but is a rough New York real estate developer, a profession in which he has become quite accustomed to a bare-knuckled, in-your-face kind of coarse communication he has become known for during the campaign. Not only is he not many of the things the media pins him with, but he has enough actual detractions from his suitability for the role of president that it is not necessary to distort in order to make a good case against his candidacy. 

The problem, though, is the truth simply isn’t as sexy to media execs as tapping into the fears and prejudices of people to get them to tune into your broadcast. Trump is many things, even completely unprepared to be president, but apparently, that is just simply not good enough click bait for the bosses, so the cavalcade of distortions about those running for the highest office will continue to come in, and our understanding of the candidates and the issues will remain compromised.