“I will always be with you, I promise you that,” the president told thousands of his fans at an airport hangar in Melbourne, Florida yesterday. “I wanna be in a room filled with hard-working American patriots who love their country, who salute their flag” — here he punctuated the air for emphasis — “and who pray for a better future,” he added, as many were standing up and applauding.
The so-called populist twirled a pirouette, wearing a high-starched white collar that exposed his gizzard, which was mercifully shielded by the microphone stand. “I also wanna speak to you,” the 45th president of the United States intoned, “without the filter of the fake news. The dishonest media, which has published one false story after another, with no sources,” he said, waving his arm out as the crowd roared, “even though they pretend they have them — they make ‘em up in many cases — they just don’t. Wanna. Report. The Truth! And they’ve been calling us wrong now for two years, they don’t get it.”
It is worth nothing here that during his successful campaign, many supporters were heard shouting the odious phrase lügenpresse at newspeople present at rallies such as the one that took place on Feb. 18 — on Presidents Day weekend — one month into the new regime.
Dear Leader continued, “But they’re starting to get it, I can tell you that. They’ve become a big part of the Problem. They are part of the corrupt system.” Then, going up a few octaves in intensity: “Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln, and many of our greatest presidents fought with the media and called them out oftentimes on their lies. When the media lies to people, I will never. Ever. Let them ... get away with it. I will do whatever I can that they don’t. Get. Away with it.” His cheering section behind him stood up again, presumably as did everyone else.
Slicing an imaginary vertical column of air with his thumb and forefinger, Il Douche went on in an aggressive staccato fashion: “They have. Their own. Agenda. Their agenda” — pointing around in a circle — “is not your agenda.” His fans went wild. “In fact, Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself,’ he said, ‘becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.’ That was June 14th, my birthday, 1807.” Laughter and whistling dispersed throughout the hangar.
As for what Jefferson thought of “the newspapers,” the cited passage comes from a letter he wrote to one John Norvell, on June 11, 1807. (Unless these are fake numbers, that was not the president’s birthday.) Jefferson was describing “the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, ‘by restraining it to true facts and sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers,” Jefferson wrote.
“It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.” Later on, the 3rd president of the United States bemoaned “the demoralizing practice of feeding the public mind habitually on slander, and the depravity of taste which this nauseous aliment induces.”
“But despite all their lies, misrepresentations, and false stories,” the president declared, “they could not defeat Us in the primaries and they could not defeat us in the general election” — the volume of his voice steadily escalated — “and we will continue to expose them for what they are and, most importantly, we will. Continue. To win. Win. Win!”
Standing ovations broke out. “We are not going to let the Fake News tell us what to do, how to live, or what to believe. We are Free and Independent People, and we will make our own choices. We are here to speak the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth. I hear your demands, I hear your voices, and I promise you I will deliver. I promise that.” He assured his economically precarious constituency that his White House is “going sooo smoothly. And believe me, I and we inherited one big mess, that I can tell you.”
He boasted that as he spoke “gang members and drug dealers are being thrown out of the country and they will not be allowed back in. You’ve seen it on television.” His supporters have not likely seen on TV in the last week and a half that there have been hundreds of deportation raids led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in cities across the country, described as “gestapo-style” by witnesses, including many cases where mothers are being deported even after living in the States for two decades and raising families.
Those are the Bad People, assuredly. “They’re going out, or they’re being put in prison. But for the most part, get them the hell outta here — bring them back to where they came from.” As Jefferson observed in his 1807 letter, “Defamation is becoming a necessary of life.”