Some assembly required

Call the legitimate press that does legitimate reporting on your legitimate words and actions "fake news" long enough and fake thinkers will treat that dismissive characterization as fact.

Note the pro-Trump signs in the background of this photo. Note the almost daily screams of "fake news" on Trump's Twitter account alone regarding the legitimate media's reporting on Trump's words and actions. Note that the American population of racists, KKK members, and people who explicitly or tacitly endorse lynching and other forms of shut-up murder are measurably all in what's left of Trump's base.

Javier Valdez, a reporter covering government corruption and the illegal drug trade, two weeks ago became the fifth such journalist to be murdered execution-style in Mexico in two months.

There are lots of similar legitimate journalists in America infuriating the "fake news" population. There is lots of open enthusiasm from that population over Montana Republican House candidate Greg Gianforte body-slamming a reporter who asked him a question about the Republican healthcare bill just this week. There is overwhelmingly lots of influence -- legally, Constitutionally and culturally -- over this population by the disproportionately powerful American gun lobby.

And these people have access to lots of both literal and metaphorical rope.

"Russian salad dressing"? "Stop shaking your head"?

I'm finally home and finally tuning in to today's news. I was hoping to hear about the EPA rollback executive orders and on what planet they'd provide any appreciable job growth. But instead HOLY SHIT.

Racist or not -- and I think he is -- stupid or not -- and he clearly is -- Sean Spicer is almost more puerile and belligerent than our inarticulate man-boy president. He's rude and childish and slow-witted and uninformed and a gaspingly bad liar ... and he's the United States White House PRESS SECRETARY. He's incapable of answering obvious, expected questions from the press in any depth, and he lashes out at the reporters when they do their job of expecting him to do his job. And today -- just for good measure -- he added a whiff of impulsive racism to the festering stench of his professional and intellectual and personal and moral failings.

Sean Spicer is supposed to be conveying detailed information and contextual nuances and geopolitical relevancies from the White House to the Fourth Estate. Not making clumsy condiment references and racist condescensions. He's supposed to be helping shape the news using his informed intelligence. Not making the news because of his lack of it.

He's supposed to help us believe this administration isn't a catastrophically inept international embarrassment. Not prove it.

Sean Spicer's high-wire act

Bickering and lashing out when you've gotten yourself trapped in a corner is what toddlers do. And feral dogs. And now, Trump press secretaries. I understand his job is to defend the indefensible and explain the unexplainable, but nobody forced him to take the job, and getting defensive instead of answering questions like he's supposed to do just makes him more intellectually alarming and contemptible by the day. And to think, he gets free healthcare no matter how little he knows, how much he obstructs or how catastrophically he fails at what he does.

Via JoeMyGod: Watch through your microwave here

Whining about rudeness

Projection? Duh. Distraction? Duh. A tacit admission that he has neither the foundational knowledge nor the intellectual firepower to coherently address anything more complicated than an envelope?

Sadly, horrifyingly, rudely duh

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