Yesterday, Donald Trump tweeted a video of himself pretending to beat up CNN, captioning the tweet with “#FraudNewsCNN #FNN”. This isn’t the first of many immature antics he’s done since he’s been in office. Last week, he insulted reporters Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, calling Scarborough “crazy” and “psycho” and insulting Brzezinski by saying she was “as dumb as a rock”, had a low I.Q. and insinuating that she had a face lift. Not only this is a form of bullying, it is absolutely disgraceful. This is a direct reflection on how he deals with people he disagrees with.
For a long time, America has been seen as the leader of the free world. We dominate heavily in economics, military and have a large impact when it comes to pop culture. According to Donald Trump, our status is being threatened by other outside countries, specifically Mexico and countries in the Middle East. Trump hasn’t exactly said why these countries are threats though, using the buzzwords, “illegals”, “terrorism” and “radical Islam” as reasons, using no evidence of these boisterous claims.
It seems like America is slowly, but surely losing its status of being the leader of the free world. We seem to be in tight competition with France, Canada and Germany. Although French President, Emmanuel Macron has been in office for a month and a half, he has a 64% approval rating, compared to Trump who only had a 37% at around the same time. It has been 6 months and Trump’s approval rating has only gone up by 2.5%.
When someone who is at such a high standard of power makes fun of journalists, attacks marginalized groups of people and makes inaccurate accusations left and right, what does that say about the people within the country and the country itself? It seems like Trump is taking his presidency as a joke and is careless about the way he says and does things. The way he makes accusations and makes them believable is textbook McCarthyism. He says things but only uses himself as a source, and nothing else. When someone is at a seat of power, they cannot make a joke of attacking a group of people and expect it to fly by. When you bully someone because of the way they look and their intelligence, it makes you look like a child, not someone that runs one of the world’s most powerful nations.
In this day and age, it is almost impossible to tell what is fake and what is real. Although we have the Internet at our fingertips almost all the time, it can be very hard to distinguish bias and credibility. During the Trump era, there is a falsified sense of what is true and what isn’t. He has put a new meaning to the words, “fake news” and has also spewed hate about millions of Americans. The truth is the President is going to continue to say what he wants, but the way we react to it as a country is what matters.
