What's slightly disconcerting is the mainstream media's complicity in the Trump debacle. They are happy to report and dissect every inane tweet he makes, and give his implausible arguments huge amounts of oxygen through airtime. Yes, it's all brilliant political entertainment for those of us so inclined, but given what we know about Trump and his team's operating methods (denial, hypocrisy, falsification) perhaps a more responsible approach would be to report events very soberly focusing on the facts, and reduce his mainstream platform. Given his professed hatred of the mainstream media, his objection to such a approach would be another instance of pathological hypocrisy. Somehow I find that Trump is a case where AC's axiom of "don't argue with and idiot as they will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience" rings very true, and I wonder if the media ought not to play a different game.

That's what Steve Bannon wants, the media should just shut up. They aren't going to.

I wasn't suggesting they shut up, I was suggesting that instead of shining a great big spotlight on Donald, and revelling in his stupidity (which is great entertainment) they should report more seriously and factually on his incompetence. Not continually seek clarification from Spicer or Kelly Anne, and allow themselves to be spun. Take a more detached tone. At present, the media seems to participate in the whole circus.

It's their job to report what is going on, and if he steps on his dick 3 times a day and Spicer and Conway step forward to try and clean it up it's their job to report that as well. In a democracy, muzzling the press is one move that justifies removal of a government

It was that story that gave me sympathy for his spin doctors. They're like the parents of a delinquent child, every day in fear of knowing what he's done and being ready to excuse it somehow. The day they realized that Trump believes what he says, he's not just selling, must have been awful for them.

Let's just say for arguments sake that Clinton won

Then all the Trump supporters came out and protested!! (Not that they could as most probably have proper jobs) then what would people be saying about the protests ? And also let's say the news channels witch hunted Clinton regarding her emails and other scandals they may have found, just a what if !!

I am 100% sure most would be moaning that Trump and his supporters were sore losers.

Basically what I am saying is whatever Trump does, it will be wrong for 50% of Americans because they are just pissed they lost the election

I don't think that holds. Clinton, or Ted Cruz for that matter, would not be lying wholesale, stirring up trouble with Iran and China and for Israel, they would not have lurched into a dubiously constitutional, poorly drafted, executive order in the first five minutes. They would being looking to make a solid start to a full term. Trump is making himself look stupid, what anyone else might have done is no excuse for him.

In the more typical case a minority of extreme political partisans would object to the incumbent of the other party regardless of what he or she did, most people would get over the election and move on. Trump isn't quiet enough than anyone can ignore him, he's always going to be in the news doing something embarrassing.

This is so nonsensical it's beyond funny and out the other side.

Nobody in the previous few posts has suggested that Trump is not the legitimately elected president; they are not "pissed they lost the election."

What worries me, and I'm sure others who are posting with increasing incredulity on this and other threads, is that Trump genuinely seems (a) not to understand how the government of the USA works, and (b) not to understand the difference between truth and fiction. That would be worrying regardless of the political stripe of the president. It would be just as worrying if Clinton were in office and, within her first couple of weeks:

• Published inflammatory tweets criticizing individual members of the judiciary
• Issued an executive order that is so wrong it has, successively, been the cause of the falling-on-her-sword of the outgoing deputy AG, and been overturned in two rounds of court hearings
• Had his press secretary stand on a podium and utter blatant - and easily verifiable - falsehoods on several occasions
• Signed an executive order (the one giving Bannon a seat on the national security committee) that by his own admission he didn't understand or read properly
• declared that the media "is the opposition"
  

Those are not the actions one expects of a president who understands what the job of presiding actually entails.

Your right DBD, they would just forget all the things they promised the.voters and do nothing new.

You have to remember, (even tho no one in the rest of the world, except maybe Russia) these things trump is doing is what the electorate wanted him to do

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.busi...?client=safari

Americans are sharply divided over President Donald Trump's order to temporarily block U.S. entry for all refugees and citizens of seven Muslim countries, with slightly more approving the measure than disapproving, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

Nothing to do with muzzling the press. It's about news as reporting and analysis or news as salacious entertainment. Focusing on Spicer/Conway as quasi celebrities is part of the problem. No need to report on that - it's a distraction.

And a distraction the Trump team can use and has used to direct attention to or from where it wants it. CNN and other media organizations supporting Clinton in my opinion never did nor do grasp how Trump has set the rules for the game and they just play along.

I'm not sure that's correct. What he's done are those things in Oakvillian's bullet points.

I doubt most Trump supporters wanted that.

It's more likely that his supporters are ignorant of the facts and issues and think he's being unfairly blocked. They're probably the kind of folk who in another life (and, sadly, this one too) would have been part of a lynch mob.

Indeed.

I don't think anyone looks on Spicer and Conway as celebrities, they are newsworthy because of their positions. What they do is news, they are representing the government of the US. If you want to distract from what is going on in the White House, don't report on what is going on in the White House, report on sports or weather. The big story in nearly every major news service in the world right now is the US presidency. The problem isn't the media or the way they are doing their job, it's the people they are reporting on.

I think like SOME (not all) Brexit voters, they are driven by anti-establishment frustrations, and simply see Trump as their guy, with all the real world detail being dismissed as establishment smokescreen. Identity politics.