Surviving Trump: The President Misses The Media Attention [Op-Ed]

President Donald Trump has to be the king of shooting himself in the foot, whining about how he got shot in the foot and then turning his entire political platform into Trump’s Self-Inflicted Bullet Wound To The Foot Show, believing that he’s leveraging his star power when he’s actually just putting his idiocy, glaring lack of self-awareness, and possible dementia on full display.

This is about Trump’s illogical, free speech-defying media ban, and how it has resulted in an immediate backfire.

Let’s get into it…

Trump: Can You Hear Me Now?

Who knows how Trump thought his selective media ban was going to play out. When he decided to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House press pool for unspecified reasons he’s only spoken about in the abstract publicly, he was certainly saying to himself some Trumpty-dump version of “That’ll show them.” (If he tweeted it, it would’ve been in all caps and “THAT” would have been in quotation marks for some reason.) But it’s only made him look like a petulant child who is mad at his kindergarten teacher who never gives him a smiley face sticker because he’s never earned one, and it has only caused him humiliating moments like this one:

On Monday, Trump was speaking at a ribbon cutting ceremony for his new helipad on the South Lawn of the White House alongside a construction crew, but if you were watching it on Newsmax or any other broadcast, you wouldn’t be able to hear a word he was saying because all the major press pool players, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and even Fox News, responded to Trump’s ban by boycotting the White House in solidarity with the free press, and that resulted in no audio to pick up what was certainly just another of Trump’s usual boasting, babbling and bloviating sessions.

“OK, so, there’s no microphone because the pool cameras aren’t there, so maybe…this is one example of it backfiring just a little bit,” a Newsmax reporter can be heard explaining in the viral video of what, now that I think about it, is Trump’s best speech ever.

Seriously, no notes. This was the president’s most truthful, informative, introspective speech to date. Who knew orangey-white noise was the relaxing tool I’d been searching for?

Trump Breathes Hot Cheeto-Breath All In Mamdani’s Personal Space

Trump apparently still hasn’t gotten the MAGA memo that he’s supposed to join his loyal Islamophobes in blindly hating NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, because, on Monday, Mamdani invited him to a closed-door meeting at the mayor’s residence, and not only did Trump show up, but he went before the media, shoulder-to-shoulder with the Muslim mayor MAGAts love to hate like it was no big deal.

According to the New York Times, Mamdani said he and the president discussed several issues, including Trump’s elimination of temporary protected status for Haitian migrants. But mainly, the two met so Mamdani could discuss his plans to build 12,000 homes atop a city-owned rail yard in Queens, Sunnyside Yard. Mamdani acknowledged during the press conference that “constructing an entirely new neighborhood” wouldn’t be possible without federal aid.

Anyway, at one point during the news conference — after Trump declared that he wants Mamdani “to be a great mayor” and mused that “he certainly has potential” — the president was asked about the media ban, to which he claimed, “They said they were gonna boycott me, but they never boycott me.”

He probably hadn’t seen that ribbon-cutting ceremony footage yet. Or maybe he forgot he was there completely and thought the footage was AI.

The only thing more amusing than Mamdani trying his best to keep a straight face while listening to Trump try his best to make his delusions real is the mayor low-key pulling the president’s hoe-card by telling reporters, “I told the president that we’re gonna have all the members of the press here on the lawn.”

Trump TV

OK, let’s talk about this “Trump TV” ridiculousness that went live at 7 p.m. ET on Monday, according to Time. It’s unclear if the launch of this 24-hour YouTube stream is Trump’s response to the big, mean media not showing up to his birthday party after he handed out invitations to everyone in class except CNN, MS NOW and Politico, but the timing seems convenient, if not.

What is clear is that Trump does not have great marketing people — because WTF is this shit?

Trump’s people are really trying to have every syndicated showrunner across pop culture beating down the president’s door, demanding that he remove their content from his MAGA-fied broadcast, because in the advertisement for Trump TV, they stitched together clips from Breaking Bad, Seinfeld, Friends, Big Bang Theory, The Office, Family Guy, The Simpsons, and a gaggle of other predominately-if-not-all Caucasian TV shows and movies, and, when I tell you — I’ve never been more relieved to see Black entertainment be completely ignored than I was watching this white nonsense here.

See, the problem is Trump is so delusional and egotistical that he just can’t fathom the fact that his brand isn’t the draw he thinks it is. He’s out here telling Republican congressional candidates to campaign like he’s on the ballot, because he thinks that will save them in the midterms. Meanwhile, Republicans are basically placing their backpacks on the empty seats next to them so Trump doesn’t try to sit with them because virtually every poll released over the last year and a half indicates he’s the most unpopular president, possibly in history.

Trump thinks he’s doing something with Trump TV, as if he’s completely unaware that his media company, which also owns Truth Social, reported a $238 million loss this year.

It’s also worth noting that Trump TV is essentially a form of state-run media, which is typically a communist thing, which, as I understood it, is something he and his MAGA minions are gravely afraid of, as it is supposedly taking over America via the Democratic Party.

Anyway, moving right along…

Trump Was Big Mad CNN Was In The Building At The UN

On Tuesday morning, while Trump was in New York, he spoke at the United Nations General Assembly, which, of course, always goes well when Trump is in the building. (I can only assume the escalators were working this time.) Ahead of his speech, CNN Chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins and her camera crew confronted him, and boy, Trump was not happy about it.

“I’m surprised CNN is here covering me. You shouldn’t be here,” Trump snapped, prompting Collins to explain, “The United Nations allowed us in, sir.”

“You should not be here covering me. You said you weren’t going to be covering me,” the president insisted.

Not Trump out here Deborah Cox-ing it, like, “HOW DID YOU GET HERE???”

Apparently, the president of the United States isn’t knowledgeable enough about how literally anything works to understand that a White House press pool ban doesn’t remove reporters’ United Nations credentials.

In our last episode of Surviving Trump, I noted that CNN, MS NOW and Politico officially filed a joint First Amendment lawsuit to restore their access to the White House on Monday. We shouldn’t be surprised if that goes the same way it did when media outlets successfully sued the Pentagon for restored access after virtually every mainstream media outlet refused to agree to a new press policy that would’ve required Pentagon approval for all media reporting, resulting in those outlets being banned from the Pentagon press pool and replaced by right-wing podcasters and bloggers.

Trump and his administration have been anti-free press for as long as he’s occupied the Oval Office over the last decade. Now, it’s only causing him more humiliation than he has already suffered since the start of his abysmal second term.

Sad.

SEE ALSO:

Surviving Trump: Trump Defends White House Media Ban [Op-Ed]

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