Our President Is Irrelevant

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Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) tweeted at 9:56 PM on Mon, Apr 06, 2020:
“As a former White House reporter, I don’t say this lightly: Media should ignore the Trump follies, abandon the WH briefing room, and interview governors, doctors, nurses, victims and anybody else approaching the truth.

Stop being props.

Just stop.”

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103 thoughts on “Our President Is Irrelevant”

  4. politico via msn:

    Former President Barack Obama on Monday offered high praise for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, endorsing the former presidential candidate’s extensive framework for how to jump-start the economy once the coronavirus pandemic recedes.
    As she often does, @SenWarren provides a cogent summary of how federal policymakers should be thinking about the pandemic in the coming months,” Obama wrote in a tweet, linking to a Vox interview where the Massachusetts Democrat discussed her multiple plans to address the global pandemic and its economic fallout.

  12. Craig, before I became aware of your contributions to our society, I was well aware of the place your former associate, the late Helen Thomas played in keeping our presidents’ forthcoming in their dealings with the People of this great country. I can just imagine what her reaction would be to Fournier’s capitulation.

  17. Flatus
    The White House news people may be required to cover the daily Presidential performance but how they cover it is their choice. Looks to me like a short paragraph should suffice. They do need to dig for what is really happening. 
    I suspect Ms Thomas would find covering this shit show a challenge too, after all she had presidents that could be embarrassed when they screwed up.
    Jack

  18. Jamie – If  preziDunce Cockwoble J. Trump does have a stake in a hydroxycloroquine mfg in France, can we oust him for emoluments?  
    And, while I agree that covering SFB every night is like a little rally for him and his followers, it’s also sunlight shining on his ineptitude and lies.  Why give him one more thing to use in his I-am-the-victim-here game?   Just fact-check the F-er as soon as he’s done flapping his lips.

  20. Some one wrote a column defending the current coverage by saying “reporters are supposed to be where the action is” I didn’t think that was a very good defense given that the daily briefing isn’t where the action happens. 
     
    Jack

  21.  A reporters real job is to churn out usable copy that attracts eyeballs and sells ads. It always has been. In the olden days , honest integrity got you a large audience. Now a days, eh? not so much.  So if you are covering the White House in this day and age you sell your soul (ex. Judith Miller @ NYT) After all you have children to feed and put through college too.  That is why I pay little attention to cable “news” or even TV “news” in general, it is all designed to attract viewers not to inform.
    I am, also, cautious about anything that the Whitehouse press corp sayes given their obvious conflicts of interest.
    Jack

  22. ya know…  even if no reporters showed up…  the cameras are still rolling.  trumpty could just go on and on without reporters’ questions….  hell… he’d probably prefer it.

  24. Reporters today are working out of fear.  Fear that they will be cut out of the story.  Fear that they will be lambasted by SFB.  Fear that they will become irrelevant.  They already are.

  27. I subscribe to four newspapers. I read two of them, the Journal and our local paper, the State. I don’t bother with the Times. I read abstracts from the WaPo. The WSJ has an excellent take on both national and international events. It is an excellent read that does not require a business background. Its editorial department is fiercely independent. I would read more if my vision wasn’t less than it used to be.

  28. Jack, Tell ya what I’m gonna do. Right now it’s a beautiful Spring day. I’m going to lift the potted plants from their winter resting places in our bathtub returning them to their proper places in the front and side yards. Howze dat for a plan??

  31. Most of the White House reporters work for big corporations whose only concern is profit.  Yes, Trump’s press conferences are a sickening form of entertainment, but entertainment is far more profitable than accurate and honest news reporting.   What reality star Trump understands is that he and the reporters are all in the same business:  “show business.”
    While the reporters themselves may have integrity, their bosses do not.   
     
     

  34. Flatus
    Checked the weather and we will have one more cold spell this week, low thirties. So my indoor plants are waiting in anticipation. 
    Buddha of the back yard had a pot of pansies that I never got around to empty and with the mild winter they survived and are blooming I took him out so he could enjoy. I took Bart out too and he is giving the eye to the tulips, who knows what destruction is on his mind. Anyway as I came in I saluted each in his own manner. For Buddha, hands together and a bow. For Bart, right hand raised and the middle finger extended.
    Back to recreating my strawberry bed, so much was set aside these last 2 years.
    Jack

  35. Not even a word of caution about the danger at polling places today:

    Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) tweeted at 11:26 AM on Tue, Apr 07, 2020:

    Wisconsin, get out and vote NOW for Justice Daniel Kelly. Protect your 2nd Amendment!

  36. Rand Paul should resign from the Senate and stay at that hospital where he can help people instead of hurtling them with reckless speech.

  38. There video from Wisconsin polling places.  I guess six feet in Wisconsin isn’t six feet everywhere else.  And, masks???  When cheeseheads start dropping like flies, we know who to blame.

  41. We didn’t have a  single hard freeze this winter–usually we have at least one along with a frost just after Easter. With Easter being late this year I don’t obsess about waiting until the week after that holy day.
    Out at the Fort, they had so many silly rules that they took all the enjoyment out of gardening.

  42. You have to face the fact that republican presidents have been getting weirder and weirder.   Reagan was a weird president but he’s been outstripped by every one since, and now we’re in Mundo Bizarro.
     

  43. Ok Bush 1 wasn’t weird.   But they turned on him when Perot gave them the excuse and cover.
    And that was weird.
    And he did ACT weird.
    I mean, playing that guitar with Lee Atwater—-that was weird.

  44. No pipe busting freeze here….but quite a few days which made work damn nigh a torture.
    It was “Mr Heater” which kept me from taking the road less traveled (inside the house).

  47. It’s 87 here and will be 94 tomorrow.  Then, it will be back into the 40s at night next week, 

  49. Sometimes I think, well if ya hadn’t smoked that pot all your life ya mighta amounted to something. Then I think, “Nahhhhhh”.

  53. One of my friends was Skipper…..he sent me SO much pot from Vietnam. .  No seeds no stems.  

  54. I suppose that’s why we lost the war.  That light at the end of the tunnel was a canary’s flaming eyes.

  58. George had his moments and Lennon came up with a few or 3 “global” hits but Mac tore up the pea patch with pop rock and roll.    

  59. I was in B’ham when Doug Layton and Tommy Charles decided to burn Beatle records because Lennon was quoted as saying the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. That’s when I learned that disc jockeys could be full of shit. 

  61. Unless those at drive-thru testing centers are changing out all of their PPE for each testee, aren’t they just potentially contaminating the next person in line?

  63. Because the govt is doing such a piss-poor job of getting benefits to folks, pawn shops are now considered an essential business in Dallas county. 

  64.  

    Fun meme from @lithub on Twitter.  The comments are a fun read, but we could play it here as well.  You are on a survival show and have to pick a house with dead authors to win.

    Fun arguments going on about who to vote out of the house, who to substitute, and authors missing from the choices.

     

  65. Sturgeone

    Thank you.  I’ll take any reason to listen to Mark Knopfler.  Pair him with Emmy Lou Harris, and it becomes mandatory.

     

     

  66. I mentioned some time back about pawn shops getting rule change (80’s) and now there are mega-pawnshops

  67. I never bothered to figure out why but somehow…..Knophler made a record with Chet Atkins. 

  68. To paraphrase a slogan from the Vietnam War era,
    “Will the last person to die of Covid-19 please extinguish the light at the end of the Tunnel.”

  76. Yeah, Sturg, I was in Birmingham then, too. WAQY as I recall. Only station in B’ham wuff a shit if top 40 was your thing, and in 1966 top 40 was my thing. He and Layton fucked that station up good. Glad it closed 3 years later. I went to 610 a.m. after that stunt and never listened to them again. Dumbasses. 

  81. I’ll always love B’ham cause that’s where I saw jimmy piersall play baseball 
    He was killer.

  96. Gaga is putting together another concert for TV on 4/18.   I hope it’s not as weird & sad as the one last weekend.  I’m not sure how it could help being anything else, since it will be folks holed up in their homes, again.   
    Just reading RFK, Jr. on Bill Gates and the horrible things that have come of his vaccination programs around the world, and, all of the cross-contamination between his charitable foundation and drug companies.   

  99. Ok, so, one has to understand that Republicans must undermine Bill Gates and the general public’s faith in his prognostication, because to concede to his prescience would be to admit that trumpco, with all of the United States’ best advisors, ignored the obvious truth that C-19 was an impending threat as early as January.
     
    Republicans NEED you to believe that NO ONE saw this coming, while EVERYONE with experience in these fields was SCREAMING it was a threat.

  100. Biden is on CNN.  Geez, this guy is boring.   
    Everything he says is a tired old political cliche with no substance.   He is the “status quo” candidate without a single exciting idea.   
    He is never going to excite the Democratic base.  If he runs, there will be a lot of young people who will not bother to vote, because Biden has NOTHING to offer them but a bleak future. 

  101. Literary House #6 and Historical House #3. I hope they aren’t far apart.
     
    These are hard choices. I’d sure like to watch Kafka interact with that harem he’s in ! However, watching Mailer and Hemingway duke it out for testosterone champion will be very exciting. 
     

  102. Dr Michael Alexander’s Caveat On Coronavirus Numbers
    file:///C:/Users/Dell Laptop/AppData/Local/Packages/microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe/LocalState/Files/S0/5851/Attachments/What the Statistics tell us about CoVid-19[15379].pdf

     

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