The Washington Post begins its latest front page hit piece on President Trump this way:
On a day in which North Korea issued a fresh threat and a House committee set the stage for his impeachment, President Trump on Thursday found time to insult 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg after she was named Time’s Person of the Year, an honor he has coveted for years.
(Emphasis added)
Here’s what Trump tweeted:
So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!
How much time did Trump need to produce this tweet, 30 seconds?
The Post’s inanity begins even earlier, in the story’s headline: “Trump mocks 16-year-old Greta Thunberg a day after she is named Time’s Person of the Year.”
But the point of Trump’s tweet was the absurdity of Time’s award to Thunberg. He wrote it in response to a tweet congratulating her for the award. So, yeah, his tweet came the day after she received the award.
Post writers David Nakamura and John Wagner move beyond inanity to intellectual dishonesty in the second paragraph of their report:
[Trump’s] tweet came just a week after Republicans cried foul when a university professor made a joke referencing Barron Trump, the president’s 13-year-old son, during impeachment testimony.
Later, they add:
The rush among Trump allies to bash Thunberg marked a striking contrast to their professed outrage last week when Pamela Karlan, a Stanford University law professor, had invoked Barron Trump’s name during her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing. In making a point that Trump is not a dictator, Karlan quipped that “while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.”
But Barron Trump has not injected himself into the political debate. Thunberg has. Indeed, she is telling nations what their environmental and industrial policy should be, and criticizing world leaders who don’t agree. Clearly, she deserves no immunity to criticism.
Are Nakamura and Wagner too stupid to see this distinction? No. They grudgingly acknowledge it in the back end of the story:
Some conservatives have argued that because Thunberg, unlike Barron Trump, is a political activist, she is fair game for criticism from those whose policies she has campaigned against and whose moral values she has questioned.
This isn’t a “conservative” argument, it’s common sense — as plain as the nose on one’s face. Nakamura and Wagner have no rejoinder because there is none.
But they went ahead with their idiotic comparison between Barron Trump and Thunberg — a Democratic talking point — in the second paragraph of their story, while withholding the argument that explodes it until paragraph 17.
Just another day at the office for these two fake news operatives.
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