The Mainstream Media Is Playing the Bad Guy in "High Noon" but Donald Trump Will Win the Battle

Based on the mainstream media's reporting on the Trump transition team, it would be easy to believe that food fights and fisticuffs have replaced the work we would normally expect to get the Trump presidency up and running. Need we say that the MSM reporting is largely fiction? As with most of their story lines, they decide where they want to end and then build the 'facts' to fit their already-decided conclusion. • • • BBC TRANSITION COVERAGE IS OBJECTIVE. The BBC in London, perhaps more objective about US politics -- although Heaven knows the BBC desplays the same MSM proclivities when it comes to UK politics -- reported Wednesday morning that US President-Elect Donald Trump "has defended his handling of the transition to the White House, amid reports of disarray in his team." The BBC repeated the Donald Trump tweet from late Tuesday evening : "Very organized process taking place as I decide on Cabinet and many other positions. I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!" The BBC added that Trump said that contrary to a report in the New York Times, foreign leaders were having no problems getting through to him by phone. And he denied that he had requested security clearances for his children, in order to recruit them as advisors. He did not address whether such clearance had been sought for Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, as reported by NBC News. • But, David Willis, BBC News, Washington, seems to have been vaccinated with the US MSM needle, because he reported on Wednesday morning : "Donald Trump has spent the week since his election holed up in the Manhattan skyscraper that bears his name. He's been looking to fill key posts in his cabinet, but the early indications are it's proving a less- than-straightforward task. There have already been calls for Mr Trump to rescind one of the appointments he has made - that of the former head of the right wing Breitbart website Steve Bannon as senior White House advisor. Following a day of meetings, and a reassurance from his press spokesman that he would be staying in for the evening, Mr Trump took to a New York steak house for dinner with his family last night - a break with protocol which left some reporters speculating that he might not be fully comfortable with the sort of scrutiny that comes with the presidency." Question : When President Obama skips out of the White house to have a BBQ or burger at his favorite DC diner, is it reported by MSM as a sign he may not be "fully comfortable with the sort of scrutiny that comes with the presidency." • Reread those two reports -- both from the BBC but one coming from the UK and the second coming from Washington -- and you will begin to feel the MSM determination to paint President-Elect Trump in the worst possible light. • • • US MSM COVERAGE OF THE TRANSITION. US mainstream media has been hammering the story about the "firing" of two senior members of the transition team working on national security, saying they were "forced out." • The first such story involved New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was demoted and then possibly removed from the transition team in favor of Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, who has taken over as transition team chairman. The MSM placed blame for the Christie "firing" on Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose father was prosecuted and convicted of tax evasion by then-US Attorney Christie 12 years ago. But, the MSM makes no mention of the months of a good working relationship between Christie and Kushner during the campaign. Nor does the MSM mention the current mess Governor Christie finds himself in because of the New Jersey Bridgegate scandal involving his closest (and convicted) aides, and in which he is now being compelled to testify under oath about whether he knew about the politically-motivated blocking of the NJ-NYC bridge. That wouldn't have anything to do with Christie stepping or being pushed aside, would it??? Of course not, not in the MSM anti-Trump world. • • • Then, there is the trumped-up (pardon the pun) story about why former House Intelligence Committee chairmam Mike Rogers left the transition team. Rogers was handling national security for the transition, but he announced on Tuesday that he was leaving. The MSM spin is that Rogers and another member of the national security team, Matthew Freedman, were "fired," according to the New York Times, hinting that Rogers is thought to have been close to Christie, while Freedman is said to be a protege of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager who quit in August -- no MSM mention of the fact that Manafort quit because he is allegedly being investigated in Ukraine for taking payments from the ousted Soviet-style president who fled to Russia. • Mike Rogers set his story straight on Tuesday in a CNN interview reported by Newsmax. Rogers told CNN : "All the work has happened. The national security portfolio, the position papers, the short papers and the wider position papers were done. [It was Rogers who was responsible for their preparation and his work was finished.] Rogers added : "They're getting ready to do what's called landing teams." He was referring to groups that meet with existing agency officials as part of the transition. "All of those people had been vetted. Those people are getting ready to go in. I think it's a natural course. This is just kind of the natural occurrence of a campaign." Rogers called the infighting within the Trump transition team in New York "a little confusion. I think there is, but I think this is growing pains." Rogers said in a statement Tuesday to The New York Times he was "proud of the team that we assembled at Trump for America to produce meaningful policy, personnel and agency action guidance on the complex national security challenges facing our great country." He added he was "pleased to hand off our work" to the team headed by Pence, saying : "Once they integrate people who have been doing it with people in New York, I think you'll see a smoother transition." He added he had confidence in the abilities of those who will be eventually appointed to Trump's administration and debunked reports few people were interested in serving in his White House : "I'm always skeptical of the name game. The names I saw in my portfolios that were sent up to New York are very qualified people. America would be comforted that they could serve in the capacities of which they were recommended for. This notion that there is no one interested, thousands and thousands and thousands of really good people were interested. A little bit before the election -- and a lot after the election. Rogers and Pence, longtime friends, talked by phone Wednesday and Rogers says Pence asked him to stay available for "advice and counsel." Whether Rogers will joing the Trump administration was mentioned, according to Rogers, but only lightly. • • • Anotehr senior Republican national security expert and Trump opponent Eliot Cohen wrote in that bastion of journalistic objectivity, the Washington Post : "In a normal transition to a normal administration, there's always disorder. This time may be different...The President-Elect is surrounding himself with mediocrities whose chief qualification seems to be unquestioning loyalty. By all accounts, his ignorance, and that of his entourage, about the executive branch is fathomless." • Who is Eliot Cohen??? A former State Department official who served during the George W. Bush administration. Cohen has long been part of a group of Republicans who publicly expressed disdain for Trump's rise to the party's nomination. After Trump was elected President on November 8, he wrote at The American Interest that those younger than himself who end up having jobs "dangled in front of them" should say yes, but out of a sense of duty rather than to advance their careers. But, he added, they should "accept that they will enter an administration likely to be torn by infighting and bureaucratic skullduggery." • The WP obviously found the right person to give an objective evaluation of national security matters in the first days of the Trump presidency. • • • And, Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times : "Every administration tends to have ideological divisions, to rely on an old guard of party people alongside its newcomers, innovators and ideological insurgents. But in this case, apart from the infamous-but-still-marginal alt-right and the small clutch of conservative intellectuals for Trump, there is really no Trumpist new guard at all, at least among the people qualified to staff a presidential administration." To paraphrase the famous George W Bush poster : "Are you worried yet?" • Thank goodness for Fox News, which characterizes the recent firings as part of Mike Pence's campaign to remove lobbyists. "The move to get rid of lobbyists in key roles was one of the first decisions made by Vice President-elect Mike Pence in his role overseeing the construction of a Trump administration," according to Fox News. "One source said the decision to remove the lobbyists 'makes good on [Trump's] vision of how he wants his government constructed'." • • • A LOOK BACK AT OTHER PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITIONS. We can always rely on the British to give America lessons in its own history. The American mainstream media doesn't have time for such practical and reassuring journalism, but the BBC offers some fasciating looks back into presidential transitions. • President Hoover described the man who beat him, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as a "chameleon in plaid," while FDR called Hoover a "fat, timid capon." The 1932 election came amid a financial crisis that left the American economy in shambles, ultimately depicting Hoover as a failed leader. The two men did not like or trust each other. Roosevelt dismissed Hoover's repeated appeals for joint actions before the transition, such as issuing an emergency proclamation to limit bank withdrawals. Instead, Roosevelt wanted to show that his administration starkly differed form Hoover's presidency. The mutual disdain was apparent on inauguration day in March 1933, when the two sat in silence in President Roosevelt's open-top car while en route to the swearing-in ceremony. • Although Harry Truman had worked with Dwight Eisenhower in World War II and in the creation of NATO, the two shared bad blood after Truman invited Ike to the White House in 1948, according to Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at University of Virginia's Miller Center. President Truman had thought of working to nominate Eisenhower as a Democratic candidate for President, but the idolized military general ultimately cast his lot with the Republican Party. Eisenhower reportedly viewed the Truman offer as a terrible mark of leadership. The political clash heated up when Eisenhower undermined Truman's military policy on the campaign trail, pledging to personally go to Korea to end the war on American terms. President Truman also became irate when the General remained silent about comments made by Senator Joe McCarthy. "He has betrayed almost everything I thought he stood for," Mr Truman said, going on to fuel the fire by mercilessly attacking Eisenhower personally and professionally as unfit to be President. President-Elect Eisenhower ignored a pre-Christmas White House lunch invitation, and on inauguration day, refused to greet Truman efore they left together for the ceremony. • After President Carter lost his re-election bid in 1980 in a hard-fought contest, he reportedly felt Ronald Reagan was not paying attention when the two met at the White House. Republican adviser Richard Darman recalled in a New York Times article in 2000 that during their first meeting, Carter attempted to explain to Reagan that a CIA officer began briefings at 7am each day. Reagan interrupted him and responded : ''Well, he's sure going to have to wait a long while for me.'' Carter had spent the last days of his presidency tirelessly working to free the American hostages in Iran, which ultimately came after Reagan was sworn in. • President Clinton invited George W Bush for coffee before the inauguration day ceremony in 2001 and kept the obsessively punctual President-Elect waiting for 10 minutes. GW Bush was noted for locking the door when cabinet meetings started and if a cabinet member ran late, he didn't get in. To add to the tense meeting, Clinton invited Vice-President Al Gore, who had just lost the bitter election to Bush following a dramatic legal battle involving a recount in Florida that ultimately came down to a mere 537 votes and a Supreme Court decision. It is also important to note the long, complicated record of the Clintons and the Bushes at each other's throats on the political battle field. Clinton defeated Bush's father, incumbent President George HW Bush, in 1992. • It all makes the 2016 transition rather normal, doesn't it? • • • Sean Hannity of Fox News had some sound words of advice for President-Elect Trump : "The abusively biased mainstream media that got the election completely wrong and was so out of touch with the American people is now attacking and trying to discredit President-elect Donald Trump's picks for key White House posts....But keep in mind, the mainstream media is now suffering from a massive credibility crisis. They're the ones who wrote off, laughed at and even mocked the idea of Donald Trump winning the presidency. Here's my advice to President-Elect Donald Trump : When it comes to the media, don’t listen. Ignore the haters. These are the same people who, as WikiLeaks exposed, were openly colluding with Hillary Clinton's campaign in violation of every ethical standard they are supposed to honor and uphold. We also found out that the mainstream media is really a tool the alt-radical left uses to advance their agenda. They're just another cog in the wheel for the well-oiled Democratic machine. The media was wrong at every turn about the election, wrong about the Trump movement and about the policies a Trump administration will put into place. The media is trying to force President-Elect Trump to move to the middle. He must ignore them. The same goes for the Washington political establishment, which is going to try to push and pull Trump in different directions because they don't want real change. Trump must hold strong, and stick to his promises. Remember, just like the media, the establishment said Trump would never win and didn't fully support his campaign. Finally, President Obama is trying to make nice with President-elect Trump. Yet, he then purposely tried to undermine Trump's presidency on the world stage. Trump should ignore the media, the establishment and the man who will be his predecessor. The 45th president need only trust his gut – and the people who voted him into the White House." (Adapted by Fox News from Sean Hannity's monologue of November 15, 2016). • • • Dear readers, if any proof were needed about the truth in Sean Hannity's words, consider this. Newsmax reported Wednesday that firefighters in New York City have been ordered not to hang photos of President-Elect Donald Trump in firehouses or on their trucks -- sparking anger among some in the department. The New York Post reported that one firefighter said : "Only [the] FDNY wouldn't want the democratically elected President of America hanging in a firehouse. The firehouse is supposed to be a symbol of America. That's hard to believe when you can't post a picture of the President." Top officials in the FDNY told firefighters to stay away from politics after the bitter presidential election. Their order came after a fire truck in Brooklyn was seen with a Trump mask attached to its grille, the NY Post reports, quoting a memo sent to firefighters, who told the NY Post it was directly referring to Trump : "Posting of these materials is not in compliance with Regs." But in the past, photos of other Presidents have been displayed in city firehouses without a problem, according to the Post. "They have pictures of...George Bush standing on the World Trade Center pile with a megaphone," a source told the Post. "FDNY posts pictures all the time. When Barack Obama visits firehouses, FDNY officially posts photos of him shaking hands, people smiling -- no problem there." • The Progressive Democrats, Barack Obama and the MSM are determined to destroy Donald Trump and his presidency -- by ridicule, lies and, above all, making Trump seem to be a fool who has no business in the White House -- the 'fool' who beat all of them at their own game, and without being "crooked." But the worm has already begun to turn -- 51% of Americans are more certain of Donald Trump’s leadership ability since election day, according to a Gallup survey out Wednesday, while 40% say they are less sure about the President-Elect, and 9% have no opinion or do not feel differently since the vote. Trump’s results are similar to confidence levels US adults expressed when former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush won their first respective elections in 1992 and 2000. President-Elect Donald Trump will have the last word and laugh, but we are in for a bumpy ride to January 20. It may feel like "High Noon," but we know who won that battle between good and evil. Hang in there, America.