Don’t listen to Trump speaking about his dictator friends. It’s a suffering tape.
by Tom Toles
President Trump is speaking again. And again it is the white-noise slurry of confusion and lies. He has invented a new term: a suffering tape. Otherwise known as direct evidence of a journalist’s murder. He doesn’t want to listen. Let the CIA listen. Let it listen all it wants. It doesn’t matter what the CIA learns. Trump won’t listen to it either. He can make up his own mind. Before he gets all the facts. Before he gets any facts. Assertions are good, too. Better!
Mohammed bin Salman has made assertions on the Jamal Khashoggi murder. Strong ones, like Vladimir Putin’s assertions about interfering in our elections. Innocent! Said so! Is that good enough for Trump? Close! But there are additional plus factors here, too. MBS is a dictator. Dictator is a word that means somebody who gets to say. Again, like Putin! But wait, there’s more! MBS said this, like, five times! That’s quintuple the evidence. Plus, he said it recently! Garden-fresh assertions directly to your table! All you can swallow!
Is there a pattern? Duh. If a dictator whom Trump is not currently feuding with says something, what more is necessary?
There is only one remaining problem. Trump wants his own word to be taken as good enough, too. But that seems to only work for dictators. That is why reporters are the enemy. Dictators say, and reporters are supposed to take dictation! Instead, they keep asking questions. That is why they need to be kicked out of the White House. If Trump can’t get rid of the independent press altogether and replace it with just Fox News, maybe he can do it one reporter at a time. Eject them one at a time. Applaud someone body-slamming a reporter one at a time. Eventually, maybe they’ll get the message.
After all, Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship, deals with independent journalists one at a time.
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