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Nov. 21, 2018 - Brother Nathanael
04:04
Tribulation Trump Vs Anarchy Acosta
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Trump's flack with fake news takes on a new tack, and it springs from a bad scene at the Western Wing.
That's where scripts are shelved into TV cracks and conflicts of interest swell into presidential scraps.
I think you should let me run the country, you run CNN. All right.
And if you did it well, your ratings would be much better.
Well, let me ask, if I may ask one other question, Mr.
President, if I may ask one other question, are you worried?
That's enough. That's enough.
That's enough.
Pardon me, ma'am. Excuse me.
That's enough. Mr. President, if I may ask on the Russia investigation, are you concerned that I'm not concerned about anything with the Russian investigation because it's a hoax.
That's enough. Put down the mic.
Mr. President, are you worried about indictments coming down in this investigation?
Mr. President. I'll tell you what, CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them.
You are a rude, terrible person.
You shouldn't be working for CNN. Go ahead.
Who should be working for CNN? Wolf Blitzer, Jacob Tapper, Jeff Zucker, David Levy, fake news by any other names is a tiff with a bigger sniff.
Let's get to the bigger issue.
In 2017, last year, you tweeted this, and I want to quote it accurately.
The fake news media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people.
It's true, 100%. Not the media.
I'm glad you're finally quoting it correctly, because they like to leave the fake news.
Okay, but that's what you said.
The fake news...
So, the people that are supporting me in particular, they're very smart people.
They're hard-working, brilliant, great people.
They know when the news is fake.
And they get angry when they see all of the fakeness at, frankly, the network.
There have been people who've been critical of other presidents.
No president has liked his press coverage.
John Kennedy, in your Oval Office, canceled the subscription to the New York Herald Tribune.
Nobody called it the enemy of the American people.
Chris, I'm going to fake news is the enemy.
It's fake. It's phony.
And hate speech is phony, too.
It's simply speech that a chosen few hate to hear.
And speaking of a chosen few, out of all the White House correspondents, Acosta has been selected as the designated free speech driver.
We're extremely pleased with the ruling today.
This is a great day for the First Amendment in journalism.
We're very excited to have Mr.
Acosta be able to go back and get his hard pass and report the news.
It was almost short-lived.
CNN was victorious in round one.
I said on Friday, we don't know how many rounds there's going to be.
Looks like there's going to be many rounds in this legal battle because almost as soon as that temporary restraining order was put into effect on Friday, Bill Schein and Sarah Sanders, two of the defendants in the lawsuit, sent a letter to Acosta, a two-page letter that I have here, that essentially lays the groundwork to take the press pass and revoke it again.
Which would essentially be at the end of the month, 11 days from today.
So the letter says they believe he violated basic standards of behavior at that press conference on November 7th.
Of course, all the nation's major news outlets are standing with CNN, standing with Acosta in this case.
But the White House is vowing to fight on.
You've got to choose your battles, yet Trump was looking to pick a fight on this one.
Now he's giving Acosta's past back, so long as he obeys new rules that cap one question per soundbite.
The real question isn't about Trump and Acosta sparring on TV. The bigger question is, with all the major news outlets standing with Acosta, CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, will fake news, biased bulletins, selected scoops, and narrow narratives ever end?
Oh, it will, since a great reckoning pretends.
It's coming, though it tarry.
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