Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona seems to have recovered his respect from the media that he lost when he dared to run for president in 2008, as Hot Air notes. He decided to lay into President Trump for his yelling at the media, comparing the president’s bloviating to what dictators do. McCain is in full maverick mode, something not seen since the second Bush administration when he was a thorn in the side of the man who thrashed him in 2000.
Of course, McCain is very wide of the mark. Yelling invective at the press is not suppressing it unless reporters feel so intimidated by the wrath of the Donald that they are soft peddling their coverage.
On the other hand, the media is in full attack-dog mode against the president, working out its collective frustrations against the man who denied their favorite, Hillary Clinton, the keys to the nuclear codes. Now they are acting surprised that when they bellow at the president, he yells right back, which means they have not been paying attention.
The media is used to Republican presidents taking their abuse, occasionally sending out surrogates when they think something really blatant in the way of fake news had occurred. Reporters are not used to being dressed down by POTUS like erring school children at press conferences or denounced in front of cheering crowds at campaign-style events. They had better get used to it.
McCain, as the Hot Air story notes, is also wide of the mark when he suggests that trump is behaving like a dictator. A dictator does not stop at rhetoric. He sends the Secret Police to newspapers and TV stations, shuts them down, and drags reporters to some nasty place where they can be reeducated. They only outlets allowed to function are those that toe the government line.
The senator might also remember when not only he but his running mate, then Gov. Sarah Palin, was getting abuse from the media when he was running in 2008. Perhaps if McCain had reacted much in the way Trump is now and flayed his and Palin’s journalistic tormentors, he would have just recently become a former president instead of the lesser man who beat him and the world would be a much better place.