I’m not sure how old the adage is – but liberals should take keen advice from the phrase “only give your side the power you’re not afraid of your enemy having”.
For example, many on the left express worry about the Trump administration stance – hostility – towards the media.
They do this, apparently, forgetting that Trump isn’t doing anything that Obama did and pave the way to:
Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.
Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.
If the left didn’t have double-standards…
…well, you know where this goes, right?
What if it was another planted story by the administration, with full approval of the administration, with the sole purpose of changing the narrative.
Success
A planted story requires a complicit media, not an adversarial one.
You’re thinking of the previous Administration.
I’m unaware of any actions that the Trump Administration has taken that comes close to the actions that the Obama Administration did take, wiretaps, etc.
The only difference I’ve seen is that Obama limited his rhetoric to Fox News, while Trump has directed his ire at every other outlet. Trump’s rhetoric is worse than Obama’s (and not what I’d describe as good or appropriate), but I grew up when “sticks & stones…words will never hurt me” was still a common response from parents to their children.
Ill just chalk this one up to karmas a bitch and the media were lapdogs of the Obama administration, not the watchdogs they should have been or the rabid insane attack dogs they are now with Trump