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Old 08-13-2017, 01:15 AM
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bobabode bobabode is offline
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Tailgunner Joe and 'The Donald'

'Who did Trump borrow his press tactics from? Joe McCarthy.' WP

"Joe McCarthy loved to savage reporters, singling them out by name at his rallies in the 1950s. The Republican senator from Wisconsin knew the work of each reporter who covered his years-long campaign aimed at rooting out the communists who were supposedly seeded throughout the federal government. “Stand up, Dick, and show them what a reporter for a communist newspaper looks like,” he’d say, and the crowds would roar their approval as their plain-speaking hero fingered the enemy, the cause of their country’s woes.
Then, moments after leaving the stage, McCarthy would sidle up to a reporter he’d just finished flaying and toss an arm around him: “That was just good fun.”
Reporters who’ve covered Donald Trump anytime in the past four decades know that sense of whiplash all too well. Trump and McCarthy share a populist, demagogic speaking style and a propensity to say anything to win the moment. The two men are often compared because they both aggressively hit back at their critics and tended to inflate minor slights or partisan rows into threats against the nation.

But their similarities go deeper: Both won and cemented support by using, attacking and foiling the news media. Both deployed a crazy quilt of behavior to demand news coverage — and then stomped on those same organizations as disloyal liars conspiring against them.
And both enjoyed extended periods of popularity even amid reporting about their erratic behavior and tendency to say things that weren’t true. In the end, McCarthy fell from grace, but journalism alone wasn’t enough to end his destructive crusade. The news reporting about McCarthy’s excesses did over time diminish his popular support, but ultimately that souring of sentiment had to filter up from the public to their elected representatives. It took years, but McCarthy was finally held to account.

For nearly a decade, a renegade loner who relished being seen as an outsider dominated the news. From 1946 to 1954, McCarthy used threats, factually thin or totally bogus assertions, and personal attacks to capture an almost unprecedented level of attention.

It was one of America’s periodic dives into deep skepticism and disbelief. Expertise and fact were so widely rejected that the press, which collected and verified facts for a living, proved largely powerless against McCarthy.
The press was the senator’s primary target and tool as he soared to power and prominence, instilling fear of a traitorous faction inside the U.S. government. He kept the fact-checkers and truth-tellers at bay for years by spreading a virus of mistrust of the news. By portraying the press as America’s enemy, he rallied his base and defended himself against increasingly serious allegations of dishonesty and wrongdoing. (It would take more than four years before McCarthy’s party and his supporters reached a consensus that the man who had led their anti-communist crusade was a dangerous demagogue whose allegations bore little connection to reality.)
McCarthy was a model for Trump. The president’s approach to building his personal brand grew out of his close bond with Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s chief counsel during his investigations targeting communists and homosexuals in the government. Two decades later, as Trump’s mentor and lawyer in New York, Cohn taught the young real estate developer the core strategies that would come to define his business and political careers: Use the news media to stay firmly and consistently in the public eye, and when criticized, hit back far harder than you’ve been hit." WP


continued here https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...=.451321380498

Roy Cohn taught him well. Too bad it's going to be a while before he's politically neutralized. I certainly don't expect the GOP leadership to stand up to his crap.
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Old 08-13-2017, 02:26 AM
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Trump is McCarthy on steroids but Americans don't seem to care.
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Old 08-13-2017, 08:04 AM
Ike Bana Ike Bana is offline
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See...McCarthy was actually way, way more mentally healthy than Trump. McCarthy didn't give a shit in Marx's hat for what anybody thought of him. Donald is an utter adulation starved malignant narcissist. He doesn't even have a sick political ideology that anybody can depend on.

It's an insult to Joe McCarthy...if that's possible.
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