Freedom's just another word for no follow-up questions

A much cheerier and more benign event than the press gaggle, but they have something in common.

A highlight of the Trump Daily Caller interview was this elegant number in the "No Puppet No Puppet You're the Puppet" series:

The Real Threat to Freedom of the Press Is the Press

by Donald J. Trump

I will say that I really think
when you have guys like Acosta,
I think they’re really bad for the country.

Because they show how fake it all is.
And he’s a grandstander and we’ll see
how the court rules, and then they talk,

"Oh, freedom of the press." But can you
really have — is it freedom of
the press? It’s actually the opposite.

Is it freedom of the press when somebody
comes in and starts screaming questions and won’t
sit down after having answered a couple of them?

And then won’t sit down and then I can’t ask you
guys because he’s standing — I don’t think that’s
freedom of the press, I actually think that’s the opposite.

I'm on the Jay Rosen #SendTheInterns team on this issue, you know. This is one of those White Houses where the press can't learn anything more than they could learn from a written release in these occasions—whether it's the daily gaggle, now far from daily, or an appearance by the emperor himself, which the press secretary thinks is a much better experience, suggesting, like the short careers of Ari Fleischer and Sean Spicer, that hardly anybody is a truly indefatigable liar

"But I always think if you can hear directly from the president and the press has a chance to ask the president of the United States questions directly, that's infinitely better than talking to me," she added. 

Infinitely better for her, huh.

In that context, I think the line "they show how fake it all is" may be more meaningful than it appears at first, when you're wondering what "it all" refers to: it's the press event itself, and pushy reporters like Acosta keep exposing, intentionally or otherwise, that it isn't actually supplying the public with information but rather dramatizing the concept of supplying information, a ritual performance that's meant to protect our belief in our constitutional republic, in which it's proper on both sides of the lectern to take an aggressive posture (like boys among the Bhil people of Madhya Pradesh who act out the abduction of their girlfriends out of a round dance during the Bhagoria Haat festival as a way of initiating negotiations on the bride-price), but not to make the president literally uncomfortable.

The effectiveness of the old ritual gets more and more strained as time goes on, and Trump has been getting very uncomfortable of late, since his huge election loss, especially with reporters who are African-American and female, so Acosta, being neither, makes a good sacrificial victim. Sure enough, Trump's passing around the collection plate, offertory before communion:

[CNN's lawyer Theodore] Boutrous separately brought up evidence that hadn't been available when CNN filed its suit: A fundraising email that the Trump campaign sent Wednesday.

The email touted the decision to revoke Acosta's credentials and attacked CNN for what it called its "liberal bias." Boutrous said that by grouping that all together in the same breath, the email made it clear that it was Acosta's coverage and not his conduct at a press conference that triggered the revocation of his press pass.

Note: Nothing in this post should be read as endorsing the cruel and violent custom of bride-kidnapping as opposed to ceremonially acting it out.