A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
Most conservative commentators responded with annoyance and dismay to Trump’s morning tweets attacking Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who had ridiculed the fake Time magazine cover on display at some of Trump’s golf courses.
“So how is any of what went on this morning excusable?” RedState’s Susan Wright asked in a post. “How can anyone see a United States president behave in this manner and not mourn the discourse at the upper levels of our government?” At CNN, S.E. Cupp said that the tweets legitimized questions about Trump’s mental health. “Trump’s childish behavior isn’t just impulsive and impolitic—it’s worrisome,” she wrote. “The President of the United States should have too full a plate, too serious an agenda and too solid a constitution to rant about a woman’s looks on Twitter.”
National Review’s Jay Nordlinger argued that the tweets served as a reminder that a president ideally should serve as an example of character:
There was a time when no conservative would have disputed that the character of a leader matters, and that the president, in particular, sets an example: an example for good or ill. During the Clinton years, we said that the president was “coarsening the culture.” I believe we were right. And I think that the coarsening has gotten a lot worse. …
A president has an effect on the country in the way he thinks, talks, and acts. He leaves his mark on a country. Of course, he is an expression of our country, too—an expression of our culture. He is not merely a shaper of it. Not even primarily so.
At Townhall, Guy Benson wrote that Trump’s outburst was merely another predictable expression of his personality. “This is who he is,” he wrote. “He clearly doesn’t understand the details of the healthcare bill he’s asking the Senate to pass, yet when it comes to lobbing plastic surgery bombs at critical cable news hosts, he’s all over it. This is the man we’ve elected.”
In other news:
Conservatives defended a National Rifle Association ad featuring the Blaze’s Dana Loesch and urging viewers to fight back against the resistance to Trump.
They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance.
All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.
And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth. I’m the National Rifle Association of America, and I’m freedom’s safest place.
“Dana Loesch isn’t the enemy,” the Resurgent’s Gabriella Hoffman wrote. “She’s one of the most level-headed commentators out there. Why is the Left projecting their violent tendencies onto her?” The Federalist’s Sean Davis wrote that the congressional baseball shooting inoculates the NRA from criticism from the left for its rhetoric:
The fact of the matter is that it wasn’t the NRA that tried to murder a bunch of its political opponents. It wasn’t the NRA that published the location and security details of its foes. It wasn’t the NRA that surveilled a park and confirmed that everyone in it had the “wrong” politics before unloading on them. No, that was done by a progressive Democrat activist. All the NRA did was point out leftist violence and note that Americans have a God-given right, affirmed by the U.S. Constitution, to defend themselves and their loved ones from that very violence.
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro agreed. “Ever since a Trump-hating Bernie Sanders supporter attempted to assassinate a bevy of Republican Congressmen, the Left has attempted to shift the narrative away from their own rhetoric and back toward the Right’s,” he wrote. “That means screaming about Trump and attempting to find an excuse for targeting the Right’s verbiage.” Loesch later defended the ad on NRATV. “I am proud of this ad,” she said. “I endorse personally the message of this ad. It’s a fantastic ad and it holds up a mirror to the violent aspects of the left.”
