Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, August 11, 2018

OPINION

B3

 Mountain Views News Saturday, August 11, 2018 

CARL GOLDEN


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TRUMP’S WAR ON THE 

PRESS WON’T END WELL

In baseball lingo, the high, inside fastball is known as the 
brushback, a tactic to inform the batter that he’d better be 
cautious about digging in.

The higher and tighter inside fastball is call head-hunting, a 
serious escalation of the fear tactic and infinitely more perilous.

In spending the first 18 months of his administration accusing 
the media of “fake news” and deliberate dishonesty, President Trump has been throwing 
brushback pitches, warning reporters they’d better mend their ways or face consequences.

 By ratcheting up the rhetoric to characterize the media as “an enemy of the people” and 
suggest reporters are unpatriotic, the president has gone for head-hunting, signaling to the 
media that he wants them out of the game entirely.

If history is any guide, Trump is engaged in a fight he’ll lose. 

 The relationship between the Trump Administration and the media long ago surpassed 
the normal tensions that have always existed between the elected and those assigned to 
record, parse and analyze their every move, comment and action.

 Presidents have historically groused about the media, complaining about what they 
perceived as biased and unfair coverage colored by partisan sympathies on the part of 
reporters. President Eisenhower, perhaps the most beloved of all modern-day chief 
executives, sent delegates into a fist shaking uproar at the 1964 Republican national 
convention with his reference to “sensation seeking columnists and commentators.”

 President Nixon despised the press, and his erstwhile Vice President Spiro Agnew 
enraptured partisan audiences with his colorful and alliterative assaults on the media. 

 Despite this history, all concerned moved on, grudges faded away and animosities 
buried. Cooler heads prevailed and, while the slights inflicted may not have been 
totally forgotten, it was in the best interests and professional obligations of both sides to 
concentrate on their duties.

 All that went before, though, seems tame next to the naked antagonism and rancor that 
has come to mark the daily interaction between the Trump administration and the media.

 The hardcore base supporting the president shows up at his rallies to roar approval for 
his ridicule of the media and gleefully join in derisive chants aimed at reporters.

 White House press briefings have deteriorated into loud and bitter arguments rather 
than civil exchanges designed to elicit information for readers and viewers.

One reporter, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta, stomped out of a recent 
briefing in a childish snit because he couldn’t get an answer he wanted. He later suggested 
that reporters protest by marching on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House - a 
truly absurd notion that would play directly into the [resident’s hands. (A “Trump Unfair 
To Reporters” poster won’t elicit much sympathy.)

 Acosta, by his behavior - shouting questions, interrupting the press secretary mid-
response, giving speeches and opinions rather than asking questions while playing to the 
camera - has become the stereotype of the obnoxious, overbearing, insufferable reporter 
Trump loves to lampoon. Sadly, he’s not alone.

 Acosta’s right to display all those qualities is Constitutionally protected and he 
successfully hides any self-embarrassment he may feel.

 The President is clearly convinced his disdain for the media is paying off handsomely 
politically and, being his own best advisor, is not about to change his approach.

 However, in the long run it’s a losing strategy. 

 He still must deliver for the American people solutions to those issues that matter most 
to them - the economy, job creation, immigration, government spending, crime and 
public safety, among others.

 Running from rally to rally bellowing “fake news” to adoring audiences can only carry 
him so far.

 The media will endure as it always has. It is not about to be cowed into silence or 
submission in the face of threats or obstacles thrown into its path. The media can play the 
long game; Trump cannot.

At the same time, reporters such as Acosta must keep their composure, avoid the 
temptation to respond in kind to the President’s taunts, and remember who they serve. 
Acosta’s antics only detract from their mission and make fulfilling it all the more difficult. 

Trump will undoubtedly continue to throw brushback pitches and go headhunting. 
Reporters must remember to duck when necessary but be unafraid to dig in and wait for 
a pitch to hit.

Trump will become arm weary for certain and overstay his time on the mound.

-

 Copyright 2018 Carl Golden, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper 
syndicate.

 Carl Golden is a senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for 
Public Policy at Stockton University in New Jersey. You can reach him at cgolden1937@
gmail.


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

JOHN L. MICEK

MAKING SENSE

by MICHAEL REAGAN


UNDER TRUMP, 

IT’S EASY TO LIKE IKE

GETTYSBURG, Pa. - The golf clubs in the laundry room at the rear 
of Dwight Eisenhower’s farmhouse here are perched and ready, as if 
the 34th president of the United States might come and fetch them at 
any moment.

Eisenhower was a passionate golfer. His valet, Sergeant John Moaney, 
would be tasked with cleaning them after Eisenhower returned from 
one of his frequent rounds at the nearby Gettysburg Country Club.

 To step into this 1950s vintage home, here on the edge of what may be America’s best-known 
Civil War battlefield, is to step back into another era of American politics; though it’s hard to 
miss the parallels between his time and our own. 

 It’s also nearly impossible to miss the contrasts between America’s last outsider, Republican 
president and the current, outsider Republican president: Donald Trump, between the 
Republican Party as it was, and it is now. 

 While fraught with its own unique complications and profound inequalities, Eisenhower’s 
America was a youthful and optimistic one, emerging from the tumult of World War II to take 
its place as a global superpower and leader on the world stage.

 Compare that to an “America First,” that increasingly sounds like “America Alone.”

 Like Trump, Eisenhower presided over a booming economy, contended with the threat of 
a nuclear armed rival in eastern Europe (the enemy in that case was crystal clear), and though 
Twitter was still decades away, technology was growing by leaps and bounds.

 On the homefront, Eisenhower oversaw the construction of the interstate highway system; 
he sent federal troops to Arkansas in in 1957 to ensure the desegregation of the public schools; 
he prompted the United States to take its first baby-steps in the space race, and he famously 
warned against the emergence of the “military-industrial complex.”

 One of the clearest contrasts comes on the civil rights front. Yes, racism was rampant, but you 
could count on Ike to like civil rights, as The New York Times put it.

 Ever the soldier bound by the chain of command, Eisenhower enforced the terms of 
Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision desegregating American 
public schools. Eisenhower also signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, providing voting 
protections for black Americans.

 Compare that to our current “both-siderism” on matters of race relations, and the seemingly 
undying push for “Voter ID” that critics believe will specifically disenfranchise black voters. 

 Overseas, before becoming president, Eisenhower served as NATO’s first supreme 
commander, where he helped forged an alliance that kept the peace for some 70 years.

 “Like no one else, [Eisenhower] saw the challenges of maintaining an alliance, the egoes 
on different sides, just keeping it together,” Muhlenberg College political science professor 
Christopher Borick observed. “I can only imagine his thoughts on NATO today and [President 
Trump’s] perspective on it. They’re 60 years and light years apart.”

 Indeed, during a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania last week, Trump groused about the 
alliance, and again falsely claimed that member nations were “delinquent” in their payments to 
NATO until he forced them to pony up.

 Like Eisenhower, Trump loves golf, and has spent 135 days on the links since becoming 
president.

 Trump has also spent a total of 170 days at Trump-owned properties since last January. 
Eisenhower spent just one year of his eight years in the White House at the farm, our tour guide 
told us.

 Yes, there are similarities. Eisenhower believed in the power of personal interface, but not in 
a vacuum.

 Ike entertained Winston Churchill and Charles DeGaulle at the farm, and even deployed his 
grandchildren as secret weapons in a charm offensive against Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev, 
a National Park Service ranger told our tour group.

Like Trump, Eisenhower was a political cypher. At one point, he was courted by Democrats as 
their presidential candidate. Ike eventually revealed himself as a Republican. 

Trump, who spent eight years registered as a Democrat and gave to Democratic candidates and 
causes, embraced his inner Republican for his 2016 White House bid, though he has little in 
common with the old-guard GOP of Eisenhower.

“I can’t see Ike tweeting,” Borick quipped. “He didn’t like to say a lot more than he had to.”

Indeed, Eisenhower embraced what some have referred to as “strategic patience,” preferring to 
wait until the right time to act on an issue.

It’s hard to imagine the brash and impatient Trump employing a similar approach.

Eisenhower’s actions were “defined by his willingness not to speak in a rash way, Borick 
observed. “His speech was always very measured and not one to change course really quickly. 
Or to throw out actions or ideas without considerable thought.”

In our whirlwind time, amid our breakneck politics, that almost seems a charmingly quaint 
notion; a relic of a simpler era.

It’s easy to like Ike. Especially now. 

-

 Copyright 2018 John L. Micek, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

 An award-winning political journalist, Micek is the Opinion Editor and Political Columnist 
for PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Readers may follow him on Twitter @
ByJohnLMicek and email him at jmicek@pennlive.com.

 
TWEET PRESIDENTIALLY, 

MR. TRUMP

 Trump is still being Trump.

 Whether he’s holding his stand-up political rallies in Wilkes-Barre 
or Ohio, or delivering his incendiary early morning tweet storms, he’s 
not going to change his wild and crazy ways.

 He’s been doing a lot of great stuff in Washington, but if he wants to stay there he’d better be 
careful.

 The raw party numbers are against him.

 Last time around, in 2016, the Democrats had a deplorable candidate - Hillary Clinton - 
who lots of Democrats didn’t like, either, and therefore didn’t show up to vote for at the polls.

 Now Democrats have someone even bigger to collectively hate - Donald Trump.

 He’s already given them plenty of reasons to put on their “Impeach Trump Hats” and get out 
and vote for Democrats in the November congressional elections.

 But last week the president made things more difficult for himself by foolishly making a few 
million new enemies in the sports world by personally attacking LeBron James.

 Responding to the negative things the NBA superstar had said in a CNN interview with 
professional Trump-hater Don Lemon, the president tweeted:

 “LeBron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He 
made LeBron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!”

 Though the president sided with Michael Jordan fans in the great debate over who’s the 
greatest NBA player of all time, “Mike” sided with LeBron James, who had charged the 
president with using athletics and athletes to divide the country.

 Through a spokeswoman, Jordan responded, “I support LeBron James. He’s doing an 
amazing job for his community.”

 Though the Lemon interview included CNN’s standard anti-Trump political slant, it was 
focused on James’ foundation’s contribution of $2 million to help at-risk public school kids in 
his hometown of Akron, Ohio.

 The tweeter in chief might have been pleased with himself for scoring a few political dunks 
and inflaming the anti-Trump media for the millionth time.

 But if he wants to keep Congress Republican this fall, or have a second term, he’s going to 
have to change - and learn.

 We know he gets beat up unfairly by the liberal media and Democrats every day, all day. 
But so did Ronald Reagan. My father fought back on the issues or made jokes, but he never 
attacked anyone personally.

 President Trump should not have kept quiet about the Lemon and LeBron insults, but he’s 
got to learn how to turn his enemies’ blind hatred of him to his own advantage.

He should have tweeted something like, “I’m sorry LeBron disagrees with me personally and 
doesn’t appreciate the historically low unemployment rates and middle-class tax cuts my 
policies have created. But I like what he’d doing for those third and fourth graders in Akron. 
Our star athletes can do great things for their communities and I hope others follow LeBron’s 
generous example.”

 It wouldn’t have been very Trumpian. It wouldn’t have fit in a tweet. And it wouldn’t have 
gotten the liberal media’s panties in a twist for three days.

 But it would have immediately turned Lemon’s and LeBron’s cheap shots back on them and 
the rest of the liberal media and allowed the president to score a few political three-pointers of 
his own.

 As some point President Trump has to rise above this personal crap.

 His family already knows how to do it. First Lady Melania Trump publicly supported James’ 
work in Akron through a spokesman. First Daughter Ivanka supported the press against her 
father, saying she didn’t think journalists were the “enemy of the people.”

 In one smart tweet the president could have turned the tables on Lemon and LeBron.

 The liberal media would never have given him credit for taking the high road, but that’s 
OK. It’s time the man who is president of us all starts acting presidential.

 It’d be for his own political good. But more important, it’d be for the good of the country.

-

 Copyright 2018 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a 
political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, 
and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of 
The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.
com. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter. 

 Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on 
using columns contact Sales at sales@cagle.com.

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