Trump just lashed out at the NY Times in a panic after his polls plummet

Even in his own mind, Donald Trump has no value…apart, that is, from his poll numbers.

So when his poll numbers show him losing the 2020 election — a prospect that means losing the immunity from prosecution that he enjoys as a sitting president — Trump’s tiny mind explodes and he goes into freakout mode.

Given his first Twitter posts this morning, Trump must have had a restless night of tossing, turning, and ruminating last night, for he immediately launched into one of his patented attacks on the media — a convenient scapegoat for his faltering electoral future.

This morning, it was once again The New York Times that was in his crosshairs. The management of the newspaper — which Trump has disparaged as “Failing” and “once great” (the latter presumably before it started reporting in-depth on Trump’s criminal behavior) — reportedly told the staff recently that it wanted them to “write more deeply about the country, race, and other divisions” in the advance of the 2020 presidential elections.

Trump took the editorial imperative to mean that The Times felt that the reporting of his collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice as detailed in the Mueller Report had run its course, and it was now time to focus on another one of his prominent vulnerabilities, his blatant racism.

He naturally tried to gain control of the narrative by spinning the direction issued by the paper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, into an accusation that paper was launching another “Witch Hunt” against him.

To interpret Trump’s ranting into plain English, one must know that his definition of “bad journalism” is anything negative written about him and portraying him differently than his own hagiographic vision of himself.

While Trump decries the copious numbers of leakers within his own administration, he is grateful for the work of The Times insider who spilled the beans on the paper’s new editorial focus.

It gives him the chance to call the now proven “Russian Collusion Narrative” phony — a view clearly disproven by the news that his jailed Campaign Manager Paul Manafort had handed detailed polling data to a Russian intelligence agent during the height of the campaign.

One must suppress a stifled chortle when Trump accuses The New York Times of being “an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party” as he repeats the talking points straight from Fox News, his own personal state media propaganda mill.

His description of what he thinks of The Times‘ reporting  — “so false, biased and evil that it has now become a very sick joke” — fits both Fox News and his own persona as Trump continues to project his own failed personality traits on his perceived opponents.

The one thing that Trump does get right is that “the public is aware!”

That’s why the poll numbers see him being so roundly defeated by several of the Democratic candidates running for their party’s nomination.

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Vinnie Longobardo

is the Managing Editor of Washington Press and a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile, & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.