Of All the Things Trump Has Done in a Week, Two Stand Out
Trump is making many things happen simultaneously. Two of them – transparency of the state and ridicule of the state – perfectly match America’s mood, and will determine her future.
The world is overwhelmed by the rate and depth of the changes the new administration is making. Around 185 million Americans have only really known the Bush 43, Obama and Biden presidencies – all examples of government secrecy and lies, avoidance of press conferences, and canned, often meaningless, statements. Bush and Biden were especially known for misspeaking and getting their facts wrong, and Obama was far more soothsayer than head of state.
Bush 43 gave an average of 31 press conferences and media interviews per year, Obama 71, and Biden 41. Trump 45 beat them all, averaging 117 press events per year, and he’s on track to exceed that in his current term.
The media’s stumbling incoherence during a Trump 47 press event (while he signed executive orders) on Inauguration Day reveals their lack of practice, and their incompetence. Did they fear, as happened the previous week, that asking the wrong question might be cause for being roughly physically ejected from the press event? Not at all! Out of long habit, they feared asking questions to which they didn’t already know the answers, and being chastened by their editors or blacklisted from future media events. Like chained dogs, they accept their prior condition, and embrace it.
Turns out, in observing our elected leadership, we don’t need professionals to translate, or fact checkers to fact check. The instantaneity and reach of information today provides whatever we need, in whatever volumes we prefer, to figure out if our prejudices and frameworks deliver for us, or need to be adapted. We are our own headline writers. Trump is modeling, imperfectly and with occasional missteps, a kind of transparency that is wholly inconsistent with centralized big government. Mainstream media and the remnants of the modern Democratic Party see Trump’s transparency and public conversations as signs of Trump the Totalitarian. They have i
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
