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.

Only the chatter

One of approximately two known photographs depicting Donald Trump using a computer, from Motherboard. He seems to think one plays it by waving at it, like a theremin.

For the record, Donald J. Trump did not Google himself; he still doesn't know how to use a browser. This morning's terrifying tweets (which he entered at some incredible hour like 3 or 4 AM, and then deleted, redoing them, or having somebody else redo them, as a properly constituted threadlet, a little after 8:00)—

....results on “Trump News” are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

—are based on a piece by Paula Bolyard in PJ Media, datelined 25 August,  after she Googled "Trump" in the news tab, nominally showing that Google's algorithm is darkly influenced by Democratic math I should say a lot of sources suggested this, but none of them gave s link, so I'm not going to try to credit them):

Lede From Behind

When he decided on the Syria airstrike in April 2017 he was watching Rogue One on the presidential plane. Via metro.co.uk.

Mr. President, the Wolf is at the door.

Wolf Blitzer, that is. Mrs. Trump prefers CNN:

WASHINGTON — On the first couple’s recent trip overseas, Melania Trump’s television aboard Air Force One was tuned to CNN. President Trump was not pleased.

He raged at his staff for violating a rule that the White House entourage should begin each trip tuned to Fox — his preferred network over what he considers the “fake news” CNN — and caused “a bit of a stir” aboard Air Force One, according to an email obtained by The New York Times. The email, an internal exchange between officials in the White House Military Office and the White House Communications Agency last Thursday, also called for the ordering of two additional televisions to support Beam, a TiVo-like streaming device, to make sure the president and first lady could both watch TV in their separate hotel rooms when they travel.

From Katie Rogers and Maggie Haberman, reporting from the Inner Courtyard of the Imperial Bedchambers. I think it's funny that he screamed at the staff for failing to prevent Mrs. T. from indulging in this strange predilection for watching news programs where they say stuff that's more or less true, instead of at her for not controlling herself. Apparently that's not the issue; he doesn't hope to stop her, he just doesn't want her to do it in his plane, or his bedroom. What she does in her own bedroom is her own business.

Trump attacks foot

Drawing by John Deering, February 2016.

Donald blows it again, spreading some fake news perhaps from Alex Jones or Stupidest Man on the Internet Jim Hoft or my favorite Russia tool Tyler Durden:

While on FAKE NEWS @CNN, Bernie Sanders was cut off for using the term fake news to describe the network. They said technical difficulties!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2017

The show was Friday night, so Trump seems to have been brooding on this for a day and a half (unless SNL was so devastating he's desperate for a distraction from that). It's pretty clear CNN wasn't trying to silence Senator Sanders. If anything, they were taking some unseemly glee in what Bernie was saying. Unfortunately what Bernie was saying has gotten a little bit lost in the excitement, and as a public service I'd like to reproduce some of that below. I'm a little surprised the Donald wants to call attention to it!

No puppet! No puppet! Chris Cuomo's the puppet!

Mrs. McMahon's Senate campaign in 2011 inspired Labor's Pains to download this picture. She does look a little like Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver, and the Beav, I think, is who Donald would like to be when he's eight or nine, though he never can.

Sen.Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie),now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave "service" in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017

This is such a dense example of the technique, I want to unpack it.

Trump has to know, for starters, that it's no longer a question of what Senator Blumenthal reported—that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch finds Trump's constitutionally illiterate critique of the judiciary "disheartening and demoralizing"—since Judge Gorsuch's official White House–provided spokesman confirmed its accuracy half an hour after Blumenthal reported it, followed by independent confirmations from #NeverTrump-but-reactionary Senator Ben Sasse and by former Senator Kelly Ayotte, who is Gorsuch's White House–provided liaison to the Senate.

Ayotte's statement allows her to avoid mentioning Trump by name—

Curious

34th Street. In the old days, CNN would have been where you go to hear Dr. Gupta's stories. How and why did this peculiar inversion take place?