Forget It Jake, It's Trumptown

I've had my disagreements with the mostly harmless Jake Tapper, but it seems the Trump Regime has finally made him self-aware, that as a voice in political media that he has a platform to demand basic truths from the White House.

Of course, dissent is not tolerated in the Trump era.  Even the chuckleheads at Politico 2.0 Axios have figured that part out.

A source with direct knowledge tells Axios that Republican operatives were urging at least one conservative-friendly website to write Jake Tapper hit pieces yesterday after his hard-hitting interview with Kellyanne Conway.

This is hardly shocking, and happens all the time, but in this weaponized political-media environment it could get nasty fast. 

Why go after him: A central part of Team Trump's strategy is discrediting the mainstream media. CNN is his top target, with the New York Times a close second. Jake Tapper is the network's star interviewer, and he's been giving the most aggressive interrogations of Team Trump for months now.

As good ol' TBogg points out, there's a method to this madness.

“I think she has a point in that the media is more aggressive,” Tapper explained. “But I think that there is a good reason for it and it’s exactly what you just said. The stakes are much higher. He’s the president of the United States. a comment he makes about Boeing will affect Boeing’s stock. A comment he makes about a judge, who knows what could happen? A comment he makes trying to discredit the entire media could actually have an effect on things. What a president says is more important than a candidate.” 

And that's the key.  Tapper is saying that holy crap, Trump should be held accountable by the press for his massive lies.  Since the whole point is for Trump to brutally discredit his critics, Tapper saying that he'll start calling out the Trump regime can't be tolerated for long.

I fully expect Trump to call for Tapper's head.  Whether or not he gets it will go pretty far in deciding if we still have an even basically functioning media.

Inventing Terror

As bad as it is, it's one thing for Trump regime NSC mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway to make up terror attacks in order to justify executive orders.  It's another thing entirely for Trump's White House press secretary Sean Spicer to do it at an official press briefing.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly pointed to Atlanta, along with San Bernardino and Boston, as one of three U.S. cities that have been attacked by Islamist terrorists to argue that the Trump administration needed to act quickly to prevent another attack in the future.

While the Boston bombing and shootings in San Bernadino were both carried out by Islamist terrorists, neither involved foreign nationals from the seven countries in Trump’s executive order. There has never been an Islamist terror attack in Atlanta.

In a Jan. 29 appearance on ABC’s This Week, Spicer explained to Martha Raddatz that the White House needed to implement its executive order quickly, before another terror attack could take place. “What do we say to the family that loses somebody over a terroristic (sic), to whether it’s Atlanta or San Bernardino or the Boston bomber?”

Spicer used a similar line the following day on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, when The New York Times’ Jeremy Peters asked him if President Trump had signed the executive order as the result of an imminent terror threat on U.S. soil. “Too many of these cases that have happened, whether you’re talking about San Bernardino, Atlanta, they’ve happened, Boston,” Spicer said. “Jeremy, what—do you wait until you do? The answer is we act now to protect the future.”

At the White House press briefing later that day, Spicer again pointed to Atlanta to explain the need for the “extreme vetting” provided in the White House’s executive order.

“I don’t think you have to look any further than the families of the Boston Marathon, in Atlanta, in San Bernardino to ask if we can go further,” Spicer said. “There’s obviously steps that we can and should be taking, and I think the president is going to continue do to what he can to make sure that this country is as safe as possible.”

Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, said Atlanta should not be included.

“There has not been a successful jihadi terror attack in Atlanta,” Hughes said.

Again, a White House willing to repeatedly create a terrorist attack out of whole cloth in order to justify political action is a White House willing to lie to the American people about everything else. Why Spicer still gets coverage, I couldn't tell you at this point.  News outfits need to just walk away and explain to viewers and readers that the White House can no longer be trusted with even basic facts at this point.

StupidiNews!

• A GOP Senate censure of Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren for reading Coretta Scott King's 1986 letter against the confirmation of Sen. Jeff Sessions is rallying Democrats.
• San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee will offer free community college to residents as a way to narrow the city's wealth inequality gap.
• The Trump regime is agreeing to work with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to battle ISIS militants in neighboring Syria, according to Turkish sources.
• First Lady Melania Trump is suing Britain's Daily Mail for $150 million over libel for what Trump terms "tremendous harm" to the Melania Trump product brand.
• FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is defending the commission's decision to stop some carriers from joining a low-cost broadband program, saying that 99% of program carriers are eligible.