Sean Spicer excluding media outlets from briefing (NYT, CNN, WAPO, Politico)

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UglyCasanova

Lifer
Mar 25, 2001
19,275
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As far as being anti-free press that wasn't something Obama kinda-sorta did once. It doesn't excuse Trump either, but let's not sweep it under the rug.
 

Commodus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2004
9,206
6,799
136
As far as being anti-free press that wasn't something Obama kinda-sorta did once. It doesn't excuse Trump either, but let's not sweep it under the rug.

I look at it this way: it's peanuts compared to what Trump wants. He genuinely can't stand the thought that the press would dare to challenge his lies and ask less-than-flattering questions. If Obama was a bit too sensitive, Trump is a prima donna.
 
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UglyCasanova

Lifer
Mar 25, 2001
19,275
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I look at it this way: it's peanuts compared to what Trump wants. He genuinely can't stand the thought that the press would dare to challenge his lies and ask less-than-flattering questions. If Obama was a bit too sensitive, Trump is a prima donna.


You're still brushing it under the rug though. Obama went after the press for their sources to get at leaks all the time, look into his use of the Espionage Act. It's not just being a bit too sensitive, and it's not just about Fox News.
 

Commodus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2004
9,206
6,799
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You're still brushing it under the rug though. Obama went after the press for their sources to get at leaks all the time, look into his use of the Espionage Act. It's not just being a bit too sensitive, and it's not just about Fox News.

Ugh. Well, it's safe to say that we can agree that Trump is trying to abuse power by manipulating press access and doing thing like asking agencies to contradict press reports. The main difference is that Obama ultimately believed in a press that was allowed to disagree with him and, to at least some extent, was willing to back off. With Trump, that seems doubtful -- you don't say the media is the "enemy of the American people" if you think there's a middle ground to be reached. You get the impression that he'd gladly limit press briefings to one media outlet if he had to, and that he sees the First Amendment as this pesky nuisance he'd get rid of if it didn't immediately lead to impeachment and revolts.
 

UglyCasanova

Lifer
Mar 25, 2001
19,275
1,361
126
The main difference is that Obama ultimately believed in a press that was allowed to disagree with him and, to at least some extent, was willing to back off.


Again though, you're wrong about that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/...ump-targets-journalists-thank-obama.html?_r=2

If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama.
 

MongGrel

Lifer
Dec 3, 2013
38,751
3,068
121
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MongGrel

Lifer
Dec 3, 2013
38,751
3,068
121
Keep those alt-truthers out by spying on journalists and trying to force them to release their sources or face jail time?

What about giving three conservative reporters the boot: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=6156794&page=1

Seems pretty restrictive.

Yup, OK.

John McCain is again the media's favorite contrarian as he takes on Trump

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...as-favorite-contrarian-as-takes-on-trump.html

Dwelling in the past is useless, other than lessons learned.

But the Republicans learned from the past from Lee, and have carried on.

30cPRsl.jpg
 
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UglyCasanova

Lifer
Mar 25, 2001
19,275
1,361
126
Are you learning lessons though? Both you and Commodus are both doing severe mental gymnastics to keep from admitting Obama wasn't that great in terms of freedom of the press. And what does your link have to do with anything?
 

MongGrel

Lifer
Dec 3, 2013
38,751
3,068
121
Are you learning lessons though? Both you and Commodus are both doing severe mental gymnastics to keep from admitting Obama wasn't that great in terms of freedom of the press. And what does your link have to do with anything?

You're heading to disappoint levels of reasoning atm if you can't figure it out.

Mental gymnastics are not required.
 

UglyCasanova

Lifer
Mar 25, 2001
19,275
1,361
126
I guess I've hit those levels since I have no idea why McCain being a media darling for standing up to Trump has anything to do with either Trump banning certain news organizations from his briefings or the failures of the Obama administration in regards to the press.

You ready to admit yet Obama had significant failures with freedom of the press?
 

MongGrel

Lifer
Dec 3, 2013
38,751
3,068
121
I guess I've hit those levels since I have no idea why McCain being a media darling for standing up to Trump has anything to do with either Trump banning certain news organizations from his briefings or the failures of the Obama administration in regards to the press.

You ready to admit yet Obama had significant failures with freedom of the press?

He had a few moments that pail in comparison to what is happening atm by a very long shot.

I would say he had an even more valid reason at the time, seeing as how the birther BS etc was complete crap.

Trump says shit that are clearly lies and tries suppressing the press almost non stop, and has cheerleaders and people trying to spin what he "meant to say" almost constantly.

Are you ready to admit you've been conned yet ?
 
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TeeJay1952

Golden Member
May 28, 2004
1,540
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106
Did Obama do some things I hated? Sure. It seems that the logic bomb insists that an action I despised is grounds for further actions I despise.
Bitching about Hillary, Obama and the Press just makes him look weaker that expected.
I hated when my kids screamed: "What about so and so." Wasn't he elected because he was different than those folks? Didn't he say it would be different?
 
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HomerJS

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
35,959
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The same apologists in this thread calling CNN fake news completely overlooked Trump using Fox News claiming there was terrorism in Sweden. Did Trump call his staff to verify story? No he went out on his kiss my own ass tour a repeated fake news propagated by Fox.

Now Fox pushing fake news should have earned them a timeout instead of CNN
 

UglyCasanova

Lifer
Mar 25, 2001
19,275
1,361
126
He had a few moments that pail in comparison to what is happening atm by a very long shot.

I would say he had an even more valid reason at the time, seeing as how the birther BS etc was complete crap.

Trump says shit that are clearly lies and tries suppressing the press almost non stop, and has cheerleaders and people trying to spin what he "meant to say" almost constantly.

Are you ready to admit you've been conned yet ?


The birther movement legitimizes having the FBI spy on journalist and threaten them with jail time if they don't disclose their sources? Really?
 
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Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
62,365
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If you're referring to me I wouldn't call myself a Trump fan and I listed two news sources that I read/watch that were included in the ban, both the NYT and BBC. The BBC has been much more impartial and fair over the past year in their political reporting admittedly. And I've said in this very thread that attack in the press is a bad move by Trump, just as it was by Obama.

Apples and aardvarks. The Obama Admin once considered keeping Fox out of an interview with a cabinet secretary but refrained from doing so. The rest of it was about leakers & national security operations.

The Trump Admin has done more than threaten & none of it has to do with national security unless you believe that the Media is the enemy of the people.
 
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fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
83,717
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Did Obama do some things I hated? Sure. It seems that the logic bomb insists that an action I despised is grounds for further actions I despise.
Bitching about Hillary, Obama and the Press just makes him look weaker that expected.
I hated when my kids screamed: "What about so and so." Wasn't he elected because he was different than those folks? Didn't he say it would be different?

Well you have to say this IS different. Different in a 'there appears to be an incompetent eight year old running the federal government' way, but that's definitely different, haha.

It is kind of funny to see conservatives, after years of saying 'B-B-But BUSH!' are now doing the exact same thing with Obama. Obama was shitty about press freedoms too, but he never engaged in this sort of war with the media and he certainly never used fascistic rhetoric like 'enemy of the people' to whip his supporters into a frenzy like Trump has. Trump is the president and his words have meaning. It's loooooong past time that he grows up and realizes that.
 
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Commodus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2004
9,206
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Are you learning lessons though? Both you and Commodus are both doing severe mental gymnastics to keep from admitting Obama wasn't that great in terms of freedom of the press. And what does your link have to do with anything?

Alright, Obama wasn't that great. It'd be fairer to say that he at least had a basic respect for the press that doesn't exist at all with Trump. The current President genuinely doesn't want anyone to challenge him, however slightly, even when it's patently obvious that he's lying.
 
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UglyCasanova

Lifer
Mar 25, 2001
19,275
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Alright, Obama wasn't that great. It'd be fairer to say that he at least had a basic respect for the press that doesn't exist at all with Trump. The current President genuinely doesn't want anyone to challenge him, however slightly, even when it's patently obvious that he's lying.


I don't think he had much respect, he threatened them with imprisonment for doing their jobs.
 

tweaker2

Lifer
Aug 5, 2000
14,477
6,896
136
"The media is the enemy of the people". Distilled for accuracy ---> The media is the enemy of the people, the conservative movement, the Republicans and the folks who support me.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,699
1,448
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There is news, "fake news," and argumentative opinion.

Now I see that George Will, a longtime argumentative GOP opinion-maker, has abandoned Trump and IIRC -- the entire party.

If we try ourselves to be objective in thought and judgment, we will have a lot of trouble with some pool of the opposition making sound thoughts and judgments credible and acknowledged. Any political group given only to winning in the quest for power will abandon any principles of decency in its pursuit. Everyone has what they think are their own perceptions, and they apply their own inferential logic or lack thereof. It is straightforward to determine errors in inferential logic. It is almost impossible to get True Believers inclined toward accepting it as near-scientific wisdom if it doesn't fit the view they hold of how they want things to be in a Future.

Some posting earlier mentioned the Obama history, so I ran a search of news-trails. If it's important and indicated in incremental hypotheses in a search path, I would look for alternate news items and discussions before I decide what most closely represents Reality -- in other words, asymptotic to the Truth.

Obama war on journalism

I had run into Salon many times before in the past two decades, and if it had featured articles from Camille Paglia, I had judged it to be a Liberal opinion source. But it wasn't as though I'd go back again and again to read it. I can tap all the major world and US newspapers, a dozen news channels global and local. The one thing you cannot infer easily is some Liberal conspiracy of media corporations and their legions of journalists. That's where the cornpone Tory-Traitor f***heads have it all wrong: mathematics itself defeats their explanation without even gathering data.

With the Salon article, it seems like an opinion piece that once again puts carts before horses, and infers that facts infer some meaning that was simply preconceived desire to create another belief or inclination among the media thoughtless.

See, it is "possible" that the administration demonstrated the coverup behavior as it was cast by the writer. There are a lot of other things that were "possible," given my reading of the news at the time the Salon article was written. I examined all the sources, and decided that there were other things "possible," and the variations or numbers of those things made the former improbable. And that was a long time ago, relatively speaking.

So after a year-long campaign aired and reported several different ways, after the last four months following the election with my eye riveted on all sources, I conclude that I cannot respect Trump as a Man, I cannot respect him as an American, and I most certainly cannot respect him as my President -- or actually -- as anyone's president. In sum, I cannot even respect him as a Human Being.

I cannot count on anything coming from his mouth having an iota of Truth to it, especially when he parrots the opposition in 140-word tweets that are usually shorter and less literate.

There is a material danger to this country when some faction elects a leader who can say the things that Trump says, and then defile time-honored tradition of a White House Correspondents' Dinner. That would be his opportunity to speak to the American People. But Trump doesn't speak to the American People: He speaks only to his Base.

What other traditions do Trump and Bannon seek to upend? Maybe running for a third term? Suspending elections? Declaring martial law? Muzzling the press? Arresting journalists for trumped up violations of national security?

There's a lot of unhappy holes in that sieve. So any good person would be apprehensive about respect for the Law itself. Not the "interpretation" of the Law, as if such is intended just toward the power-seeking end of overthrowing a regime or administration, but the meaning and spirit of any Law. But this administration seeks to delegitimize the judiciary, the press, and frankly -- a majority of the American people with every new tweet and departure from tradition.

It also seeks to block off the search-path to any evidence of its own Treason.

Donald J. Trump -- IS , , , , the ENEMY . . . . of the American People.
 
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