Thread: Paul Anger: What we can all agree on about Trump: he's unfit to be president

Paul Anger: What we can all agree on about Trump: he's unfit to be president

Paul Anger
Published 6:01 a.m. ET Aug. 27, 2017

President Donald Trump is blaming the media for the widespread condemnation of his response to a Charlottesville, Virginia, protest organized by white supremacists that led to the killing of a counter-protester. (Aug. 22) AP

As proud editor of the Detroit Free Press for 10 years, I was an independent on my voter card — and tried to act like it every day on the job. On my watch, the Free Press endorsed Republicans and Democrats.

In retirement, now two years and counting, I've become a registered Democrat. But I understand and often agree with Conservative or Libertarian views on specific issues. Let's talk about health care options, immigration policy, creating good jobs, the bipartisan appeal of a much-needed infrastructure project, and more.

But if you still support Donald Trump, I cannot for the life of me understand that.

Don't try to explain away or rationalize Trump's words and actions. I'm done. He's vile. Unstable. He's proved it over and over and over.

For many reasons, it's understandable how he got elected. But now it should be clear to us all that what he stands for personally is despicable. There's no way to pretend that this guy is fit to be president of the United States. None of us would want him for a friend, a neighbor, or a member of our families — not even as our crazy uncle.

And here's the thing that should unite all parties and persuasions right now about Trump: He's un-American.

Nobody who identifies with and reveres American values would speak so erratically about what happened in Virginia. There were “many sides” to blame? There were “fine people” marching with American Nazis and Klansmen? They carried American flags desecrated with swastikas and chanted “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil” — an old favorite in 1930s Germany. And who killed Heather Heyer?

Trump's legitimization of that Nazi rally was just what white supremacists wanted. They gushed with praise — and still do. They're more than happy to put up with Trump's belated and tepid references to their role in Charlottesville. He's their guy. And when Trump went on his crude, narcissistic, prime-time rant against truth and the media in Arizona, they had to be cheering.

Let's also get something straight regarding Trump railing against changing “our culture” and “our history” as Confederate monuments come down across the country. Whose history? Whose culture? Those are loaded words with special meaning to white supremacists.

Fact is, those monuments were not intended just to honor the Confederate heroes who deserted their country to fight long and hard to keep black people enslaved. The monuments were mostly erected long after the Civil War ended, as part of a despicable “culture” that sought to keep Jim Crow laws in place, bar black people from voting and foment lynchings and torture of innocents who had black skin.

And as someone who spent almost five decades in journalism, I am beyond fed up with Trump's attempts to demonize the media. Members of the media are not perfect. We're human. We're your neighbors, friends, family members. But the media's first responsibility is to be objective yet relentless in reporting and fair yet fearless in commentary.

Journalists try hard every day to dig into issues in an equal-opportunity way. The Free Press won a Pulitzer Prize for investigating a former mayor of Detroit, a Democrat. The New York Times did early reporting on Hillary Clinton's private e-mails. The Boston Globe took on cover-ups by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. And on and on.

Yes, the media have done a ton of reporting on Donald Trump, with columnists and network commentators properly calling him out on his daily exaggerations and lies. There's a lot to work with there. So, he doesn't like it. But fake news? No — just the childlike reaction of a bully boy who can't abide anyone or anything that doesn't fawn all over him.

Objective media will always try to find out what's "wrong with this picture." What's behind this issue? Who's making money at public expense? And … in Trump's case … why does he cozy up to the Russians? What's he hiding? Those questions will be answered by the special prosecutor over time.

What we do know, right now, is that we have a self-serving, unhinged, un-American president in the White House. I hope we can finally agree on that.

Paul Anger served as editor and vice president of the Detroit Free Press between 2005 and 2009 and editor and publisher between 2009 and 2015.

http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/c...ght/602678001/

Oh you poor stupid idiot. You don't understand foreign policy, when it succeeds or when it fails, Trump "cozies" up to the Russians because they are a vital part of US foreign policy, they are an ole ally, we have more in common with the Russian people than most people around the globe, especially in recent years, Russians are smart, intelligent, proud and very good people. Russia is the largest nuclear nation next to the United States, they are an excellent and loyal friend when you choose to make them one, or a formidable foe should you choose not to "cozy up". Russia is also about the only nation on earth that doesn't feed itself bleeding the United States dry as a bone with illegal immigration and bad trade deals.

You are such an ignoramus that you write an article asking "whose history", "whose culture"? AMERICAN HISTORY, AMERICAN CULTURE, whose else would or could it be??!! As to the Confederate monuments, those are American monuments. My family fought for the Union, part of the amazing Americans who made a mark in history as being the only people in the history of the world to fight a civil war to end slavery in their country, but some of the best people I know have families who fought for the Confederacy simply because they were from the South, and believed they were fighting to save the only way of life they knew.

No matter what side of that war you were on, you were still AMERICANS, both sides were AMERICANS, both sides believed they were right, both sides thought they were fighting for something important. It's just the way it was.

The people of the South suffered tremendous loss during the Civil War, and while I'm sure most were relieved when the war was over and slavery had ended, they were fearful, broke, devastated and held much resentment. Who wouldn't? But to their credit, they pulled together, started rebuilding, and have shown tremendous energy, hard work and perseverance to rise up from the ashes of Civil War.

And I believe Robert E Lee and the way he handled himself and the surrender went a long ways towards making a reconciliation of our country possible. Maybe the second biggest benefit of this Civil War, the first being the end of slavery, is the fact that in our country we have ourselves endured the struggle of Civil War that often plagues other countries. The American Example of how to have a Civil War and reconcile the nation afterwards is a lesson for all foreign policy students and workers to learn from.

Maybe the "press" can close their political box office and actually focus on something intelligent and akin to some type of academic that is of some benefit to our nation, people and the world. Trump understands this, while you slop around in a pig sty of selling box office tickets to sore loser events, which by the way is not anything the South even in the agony of their defeat ever did.

It's not just Trump who is demonizing the media. You are being demonized because you are demonizing our new President. It's called punch, counter-punch. You punch him and his supporters, Trump and his supporters will punch you back, that's called a counter-punch. If you can't take the heat of a counter-punch, you better not throw the first punch and start a fight you can't win. But you did, and you keep doing it, and your phony issues are falling by the wayside faster than I can even keep up with them. Russia Collusion was a media hoax and if you weren't part of it, you certainly fell for it, hook, line and sinker, which proves how both illiterate and stupid you really are about Trump, the Russians, the United States, our people, history and culture.

You want to pick on statues of dead people and living Russians. Trump and Trump Supporters don't want to pick on either one.

Who are the smart ones? Who are the open-minded ones? Who are the live and let live ones? Who are the healers? Who are the peace-makers? Well, it's certainly not people like you picking on statues of dead Americans and living Russians trying to divide our nation and start another Civil War in the streets of our country, because your lousy candidate lost an election.