A demonstrably mentally unstable Donald Trump used his platform in Phoenix Tuesday night to rail against the media, calling them "sick people" and declaring, "I really think they don't like our country. I really believe that." To which we would like to respond simply, "Thank you." Thank you for making clear we have no association whatsoever with you and your deranged mind.
Trump, on another campaign-style bender, took aim at a man undergoing cancer treatment (John McCain), threatened a government shut down to secure taxpayer funding for his precious border wall, and denounced "Antifa!" (anti-fascist) activists on the left—all while lying about the enormous size of his crowd which was, frankly, thinner than his hair. But he saved his most scathing criticism for reporters and news outlets, which means we must be doing something right.
The media, in Trump's telling, was responsible for sowing the seeds of "division in our country" and totally distorting his response to Charlottesville, in which he "very clearly" condemned all the terrible elements but "they refused to put it on."
"I hit him with neo-Nazi. I hit them with everything. I got the white supremacists, the neo-Nazi. I got them all in there, let's say. KKK, we have KKK. I got them all."
For the record, he did not "hit" them in his initial response Saturday and after he did finally mention the hate groups in his mulligan do-over the following Monday, he immediately negated the condemnation Tuesday by calling some marchers among the white supremacists and neo-Nazis "very fine people" and charging "there's blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt about it either."
Trump also named names in Phoenix, calling the "failing" New York Times "so bad ... so bad," charging that the Washington Post was "a lobbying tool for Amazon" because it’s owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and labeling CNN "pathetic."
But name calling wasn't enough for Trump, who then went on a delusional tear about the "red lights" on the TV cameras "going off" because outlets "like CNN" didn't "want its falling viewership to watch what I'm saying tonight."
Many viewers, of course, watched the entire psychotic episode unfold on CNN, which did in fact keep the cameras rolling. But Trump’s account clearly held sway with people of similar mental acuity.
When all was said and done Tuesday, nothing and no one took more of a beating than the press, which will continue to earn Trump’s ire as long as he keeps opening up that yapper.