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Volume 82, Issue 17 Web Edition
clarion.brevard.edu
SERVING BREVARD COLLEGE SINCE 1935
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February 1, 2017
'Alternative Facts'
More desperation from the Trump administration
By Jordon Morgan
Arts & Life Editor
We’re barely over a week into Donald Trump’s
presidency, and he continues to demonstrate
behavior that can truly be described as “Or
wellian,” if not just completely egomaniacal.
More so than his increasing number of execu
tive orders that prevent travelers and refugees
from seven different Muslim countries (although
the ones he has significant business ties with
are excluded curiously enough), advancing the
Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, the
former of which he also has significant business
ties with, or his order for the EPA and Depart
ment of Agriculture to not be able to share public
information, is his staff’s insistence on peddling
the term “alternative facts.”
Originating in a “Meet the Press” interview
with NBC’s Chuck Todd, Senior Trump adviser
Kellyanne Conway, when pressured by Todd to
address the fact that White House press secretary
Sean Spicer deliberately lied about Trump’s
inauguration attendance, stating that “This was
the largest audience to witness an inauguration,
period.” Conway later added, “You're saying if s
a falsehood. And they’re giving—Sean Spicer,
our press secretary—gave alternative facts,” as
reported by CNN’s Eric Bradner.
Now even if we ignore the fact that Trump’s
team is deliberately doubling down on an easily
verifiable falsehood, the fact that they have now
invented a term for their pathological lying is
even more disturbing. Brevard College’s own
Ralph Hamlett, professor of Political Com
munications, agreed, saying that “My gut level
reaction is that it’s a euphemism for ‘believe
my lie.’” That sort of reaction is not unfounded,
for indeed what other sort of reaction would
one expect when members of Trump’s team, in
particular Sean Spicer, say that “Sometimes we
can disagree with the facts,” according to The
Guardian.
Disagree with facts all you like, it doesn’t
change whether or not they are actually true.
One can disagree with the fact that gravity
OPINION COMMENTARY
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exists for instance, but if you try to jump off a
building, it isn’t going to consider your opinion
and stop you from plummeting to the ground.
This is starting to become a disturbing pattern
of the Trump administration, where verifiable
reporting by the press and even the scientific
community can simply be hand-tossed aside
by spouting that they have “alternative facts”
that just happen to coincide with their interests.
Trump said the day after his inauguration that
he was in a “war” with “dishonest” media, but
they report his lies, including one small example
where Trump said, “Here in Philadelphia murder
has been steady—I mean—just terribly increas
ing," PolitiFact reported this as being false, as
in actual fact, they were the third-lowest last
year since 1990. On Thursday, Jan. 26, Ralph
Hamlett stated unequivocally that “Either he’s
stupid, or a liar—^both are troubling.” Troubling
is an understatement as there has arguably been
no other president in recent memory that has so
brazenly attempted to deflect the press’s effort
to combat his rhetoric.
Now of course if any reporter or news out
let fails to do its job, i.e. vetting sources, fact
checking their reporting, staying objective and
non-partisan when reporting facts, they abso
lutely should be called out. However, Trump’s
administration isn’t targeting specific cases of
mishandled reporting; they are covering the
entire world of journalism under a blanket of
supposed dishonesty.
As reported by Feliks Garcia of Independent,
Donald Trump warned that journalists will have
a “big price” to pay by reporters who allegedly
lied about the size of the crowd at his inaugu
ration, on top of him saying that reporters are
among “the most dishonest human beings on
Earth.”
John Padgett, English professor here at Bre
vard College, said that Trump’s rhetoric has “re
ally disturbing parallels” between Adolf Hitler
and Mao Zedong. It’s always been a cliche and
over exaggeration to compare anyone to such
brutal tyrants in world history, understandably
so. But Trump is doing himself no favors with
his recent and quite frankly ridiculous string
of executive orders, something of which he
slammed Obama for, saying in a 2012 Tweet
“Why is @BarackObama constantly issuing
executive orders that are major power grabs of
authority?”
There has been no word by GOP Congress
members on these orders, but they were more
than eager to jump on the bandwagon of Obama
being authoritarian, despite the fact that, accord
ing to Policy. Mic, The Pew Research Center
reported that he had issued fewer executive
orders than any president in the last 120 years.
Going back to this article’s original point,
this “alternative facts” nonsense is just one tiny
shred of evidence that there will indeed be a
“running war” with the media, as Trump puts it,
but through no one’s fault but his own. The very
nature of a reporter’s job description is to report
on what is happening and what the impacts will
be. It is this administration that is the instigator
of this so-called war.
Between the president’s constant labeling of
the media as dishonest, to his chief strategist
Steve Bannon’s call for the media to “keep
its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” it
has done nothing but paint them as a group
of people who are so utterly terrified of their
actual actions and intentions getting out to the
American people.
On a personal note, let me just say this to
you Mr. President and to you Mr. Bannon, we
will never keep our mouth shut, we will never
acquiesce to your constant attempts to discredit
our profession, and more than anything else, we
will never stop doing what we are doing. All
your administration is doing is stoking the fire
to your own political demise. We all have a stake
in our Republic, and we will fight tooth and nail
to make sure its integrity stands tall.