hey, here’s a super fun thing that Teddy Roosevelt said during a speech in Kansas City on May 7, 1918.
‘to announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.’
it seems that Teddy had been on the receiving end of flak for his criticism of then-president Woodrow Wilson — and T-Rose’s response to those telling him can the shit-talking was, ‘eat an entire bowl of fuck, pal. this is America.’
keep Teddy’s defense of freedom of speech in your mind as you listen to MSNOW reporter Akayla Gardner describe what happened to her when she tried to enter the White House yesterday.
“I attempted to scan my badge, which we have to do to be able to get into the White House grounds. it did not work. there was a red beeping light, and so the officer asked me to hand over my badge. he said that it was disabled. I asked why I was not able to get inside. he said it was above him.”
that’s right — on Saturday, Preznit Fuckwit made good on his infantile threat to bar CNN, Politico and MSNOW from the White House grounds — he did it in typical Donny fashion. he’s too big a coward to ever shitcan anyone to their face, so he weaseled out and just had reporters’ security badges disabled on the sly. how fucking childish is that?
do you think Teddy Roosevelt would have ever pulled any weak-tea shit like that? absolutely fucking not. look at this homey. he never backed down from a confrontation.
let’s compare and contrast.
yeesh.
but of course Teddy Roosevelt would have never gone after a reporter’s credentials — because Teddy was an adult who could take criticism as well as he could dish it out.
now let’s back up, because I know the very first thing you’re going to ask. ‘but Uncle Jeff, Donny can’t actually ban reporters, can he? I mean, that’s a blatant violation of the First Amendment, right? isn’t there some law against that?’
you’re darned tooting there’s a law against it. here’s what the DC Court of Appeals said about that kind of fuckery, back in 1977, when Robert Sherrill, a reporter for The Nation, had his White House press credentials summarily revoked because reasons.
“Although the White House is not required to open its doors to the news media, once it establishes press facilities for credentialed journalists, it cannot deny access based on the content of a journalist’s coverage.”
got that? you can’t revoke a reporter’s White House access, just because some fragile, thin-skinned piss-baby says they’re being very mean to him.
but when has ‘Donny can’t actually do that’ ever stopped Donny from actually doing that? respecting the law is not how tinpot mad-king-wannabees roll. so now we’re going to have some court battles in front of us.
lucky us.
of course, this whole fucktangle is about more than legal battles over who gets to be a reporter.
the larger issue is, what kind of country do we want? one where the government and those who report on the government engage in an open and honest dialog? or one where some cranky Diaperload-in-Chief gets mad at words, and tries to hide his shitty crimes from public view?
I know what Teddy Roosevelt’s answer would be.
you can’t have a functioning democracy without freedom of the press. our founders knew that — that’s why they made the First Amendment the very first amendment.
and contrary to whatever MAGA may think, there’s no clause in the Constitution that says anything about ‘in 250 years we try having a king again, only this time he’s really fucking dumb.’
now, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to take a moment to talk directly to the media.
hey, worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled press: look, I really don’t want to play blame-the-victims here, but it’s not like we didn’t warn you, over and over and over, until we were blue in the face.
‘stop treating Donny like some interesting variation on governance,’ we begged and pleaded during the presidential campaigns, ‘and start treating him like the demented fascist existential threat to democracy that that he is.’
‘trust us,’ you replied. ‘we know what we’re doing, and besides, Dear Leader would never eat our faces.’
yeah? tell me, how did normalizing all of Donny’s authoritarian bullshit work out for you, with Dear Leader now happily gnawing away on the faces of MSNOW, CNN and Politico? oh, and let’s not forget the Associated Press, whose own lawsuit against a ban is currently winding its way through the legal system. remember their crime? they refused to call the Gulf of Mexico anything but that, so Donny threw a shit-fit and revoked their access. what a fucking child.
let’s get real — no one should imagine that Donny’s going to stop with those four. he’s already threatening to extend the ban to other media outlets.
it must be particularly galling for Mathias Döpfner, the owner of Politico, to find that his own face is being chewed to bits — because he’s a right-wing shit-kazoo who’s just about as pro-Donny as you can get.
Politico’s parent company Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner emailed his top executives shortly before the 2020 election to ask if any of them would “want to get together for an hour in the morning on November 3 and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of the United States of America.”
hey, maybe Mathias Döpfner might want to pray for Politico to get its press credentials back. that would be a bold strategy. let’s see if it pays off for him.
ree clue for Döpfner and his ilk: loyalty is a one-way street in the Donnyverse. it’s your job to worship Dear Leader. it’s not his job to return the favor. you’re always a single unfavorable news story away from shitcansville.
whenever Agolf Shitler takes a big, stinky dump all over the Constitution, what comes to my mind is that day back during the 2024 presidential campaign, when New York Times editor Joe Kahn said that defending democracy is a partisan act, and he won’t do it.
here’s the exact quote:
“To say that the threats [to] democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote — that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda.”
can you imagine the top editor of a national newspaper saying that?
it’s this kind of lazy opposite-of-journalism that got us into this mess. the worthless scribblers never actually told the voters what was really at stake in the 2024 election. they just uncritically parroted the lies that seeped from Donny’s rancid anus-mouth, rarely ever fact-checking them.
remember this old saying?
JOURNALISM 101 RULE: If someone says it’s raining, and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out of the fucking window and find out which is true. — Now more than ever.”
well, The New York Times’ version is ‘if one side says that fascism is awesome, and the other side says fascism kinda sucks all ass, it’s not their job to tell the voters which side is right. oh no, that would be getting into ‘partisan bickering.’
awesome work.
when Donny comes for the NY Times’ press credentials, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
here’s what the remaining members of the White House press corps should do: boycott that shit. they should stay the fuck home until all the shitcanned reporters get their credentials back.
yes, I know — if all the legitimate reporters walked out, that would lezve only the MAGA hacks like Tim Pool in the room. but it would kill Donny to walk into a mostly-empty briefing room. he feeds off of attention, and pouts when he doesn’t get it.
but above all, a walk-out would be the right thing to do.
but will the WH press do the right thing? ha ha. sorry, but there’s nothing in this world that the worthless scribblers love more than their access to power. if you really think they’ll stand up for what’s right, I have six bankrupt casinos in Atlantic City to sell you.
oops — make that five casinos.
here’s your hero of the day: Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
at a town hall the other day, El-Sayed — an actual medical doctor with a degree in public health from Oxford — teed off on that whale-head-chainsawing maniac, Bobby Brainworms. let’s give a listen.
that’s not a thing that should happen in the richest country in the world. and it kinda goes back to the fact that they appointed a guy who literally takes his kids swimming in Schitt’s Creek as health director for a whole country. and I just find it personally offensive that my dude works out in jeans. I mean, either he is not really working out, or he just has massive calluses on the inside of his legs. either way it is unnatural, all right? it’s not right. I think we all could agree that we probably need a public health senator right about now.”
I just love this guy to pieces. he’s funny. he’s charming. he’s got charisma up the yin-yang.
and, as I’ve noted before, he sounds like one of us.
let’s hope that Michigan’s voters send this guy to the Senate. what a fucking breath of fresh air he would be.
this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:
practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.
to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.
we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.
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