Acosta accosted by Trump, but he is not a martyr – Orange County Register

Well, it happened.

And it happened and continued to happen.

Last week we had a difficult time, even at the current pace of Trump's news cycles. The mid-term meetings are over and the president has claimed victory despite the loss of the House of Representatives. CNN's Jim Acosta got his press credentials at the White House after again failing to understand the difference between journalism and commentary.

An hour later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions finally took the plunge, while 85-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a fall of another type, cracking three ribs during a fall in his office at the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, at Thousand Oaks, a former demented Marine murdered a dozen innocent people for infamous reasons.

Where are the cat videos when we need them?

Lost in this avalanche of national news, there were stories that made us buzz: for the first time in 100 years, the sheriff of Los Angeles County may have lost his bid for re-election. Alex Villanueva, a candidate who has campaigned to become the sheriff of the resistance, keeps a small lead over outgoing president Jim McDonnell. Meanwhile, FBI agents knocked at the home and office of Los Angeles city councilor Jose Huizar. They were neither fooled nor treated.

And then there was this curiosity: Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate for the 2012 GOP, won a Senate seat in Utah. I'll come back to Romney.

We rightly cry and mock at the horrific murders perpetrated at the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, reminding us that there is no refuge from irrational violence. Neither a Sabbath service in Pittsburgh, nor a yoga class in Tallahassee, nor a university night at a country music bar of "America's Fourth Safest City" does not inoculate us with the horror of people mentally disturbed by a firearm, a firearm, a truck or a vehicle. car or knife or pipe-bomb.

Gather the usual suspects!

Let's talk again about the second amendment, mental health care, violent video games, social media, the lack of prayer in schools, what makes us comfortable. The only undeniable fact is that our society produces a disproportionate number of people who exploit their accumulated grudges and hatreds by killing strangers, ideally in large numbers.

In Denmark, children play the same video games as children in Newbury Park. What are we doing wrong?

Back to the president.

At the press conference following Donald Trump's election, CNN's Jim Acosta crossed the line of professional decorum for the umpteenth time, allowing his personal animus towards the president to make him unable to do journalism. goal. President Trump appealed to Acosta despite their turbulent history and Acosta immediately "challenged" Trump for using the term "invasion" to describe the caravan of migrants heading for our border with Mexico.

"We have a difference of opinion," said the president.

But Acosta wanted to debate not report. The exchange quickly turned to ugliness and personality, the president calling Acosta "terrible person".

I do not know if Jim Acosta is a terrible person, but he has turned out to be a terrible reporter.

If CNN wants Jim Acosta to have a platform to express his personal opinions, he should let him host a show like Sean Hannity on Fox News or Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. In this forum he would be free to ring anything he wants. Or he could print paper bags, privilege that this newspaper and his readers allow me. But Acosta has no reason to engage this president, nor any president in vitriolist debates at the White House.

Of course, the administration then worsened the situation by removing its references and turning Acosta into a martyr of the First Amendment. It's not such a thing.

The president would have been better advised to inform CNN that Acosta could continue to cover the White House but would never be called again, which would be tantamount to asking a foreign government to recall an unwelcome ambassador.

I am very concerned about the president's attacks on the press and on the "enemy of the people" mark, according to the media. But the media is not without sin. Acosta is Part A of Journalistic Misconduct.

It is also time to focus on the epidemic of passive but equally destructive means that politicians subvert a free press: silence. The first victim is our own Dianne Feinstein.

Feinstein rarely talks to the media about anything. She has just been re-elected for another term in the Senate, but she has barely shamed her constituents or the press that serves as watchdogs. Politicians consistently choose interviews, accepting only friendly softball press events, and often not even. While we rightly criticize the attack on Trump's press, the silence, the abandonment of media monitoring at Los Angeles City Hall, Sacramento and just about every other hall of power is also destructive to an informed electorate.

And then there is Jeff Sessions.

The former Attorney General has earned the President's endless anger for his challenge after the inquiry into Russia's question. As a prominent member of the Trump / Pence campaign, Sessions has no chance to investigate his campaign. Everyone seems to understand that except Donald Trump. Now, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is calling for street protests against Sessions' dismissal, praising him for defending the rule of law. Of course, Maddow had no admiration from Sessions for defending the supremacy clause of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, when California flouted our federal system by legalizing the state's pot of recreation and creating our own foreign policy with SB54, the so-called sanctuary law.

Phew!

Finally, let's go back to Mitt Romney.

Romney, who was mocked by President Obama for calling Putin's Russia, also called the candidate Trump, calling him "fraudulent" and "unworthy of office". Love it or hate it one day, Donald Trump will no longer be president. What will the Republican Party look like then? What will he represent? After redoing the GOP in his image, what does it mean to be a post-Trump Republican?