Opinion Forum

Trump Scores an Important Victory…Over the Media

April 10th, 2011

Donald Trump is a shameless self-promoter. His prowess as a developer and businessman has been greatly exaggerated. He has crawled around in the muck and mire of what now passes for popular culture, and deserves at least some of the blame for tawdry’s victory over grace in that sphere. He is an outsized egotist (about on a par with Obama) whose passion for self-congratulation is the only reliable thing we know about him. And that his future candidacy for president may soon be taken seriously owes to no one so much as it does Barack Obama, whose own candidacy seriously eroded the standards for presidential qualification.

But Trump has achieved something important. His decision to focus like a laser on Obama’s failure to produce a birth certificate has highlighted the absolute corruption of the American media on the subject of Obama, and the dangers of power granted in the absence of an unaligned press.

Given that Obama’s primary claim to the presidency has been his compelling life story — his biracialism, his international upbringing, especially the time he spent in Muslim lands — the media has shown shockingly little interest in several pieces of information about Obama’s life which might legitimately concern voters. Nowhere in his biographies, for example, does Obama mention his 1981 trip to Pakistan, where he stayed with influential political leaders from that country at a time when a State Department advisory warned U.S. citizens against travel to Pakistan. There has also been a strange disinterest in Obama’s 2006 trip to Kenya where, as a sitting U.S. senator, Obama criticized the incumbent government (a U.S. ally) and barnstormed with a Marxist candidate he supported. So too, there has been nary a peep among media elites over Obama’s funding of the radical “education” work of bomb thrower Bill Ayers, or his own work on behalf of the activist group ACORN, the now defunct largest purveyor of voter registration fraud in American history (and, apparently, an enabler of under-aged prostitution.).

One of the functions of the media is to protect the public from fraudulent statements made by public figures. The unwillingness of the media to fulfill this role in the case of Obama has led to significant, and probably needless, public tension. Obama’s resistance to releasing the long version of his birth certificate, has served not only to raise legitimate speculation about the circumstances surrounding his birth, but to give fodder to anti-Obama extremists.

Gail Collins, the New York Times’ most reliably uninteresting liberal attack dog, questioned Trump’s sanity just for raising the birth certificate issue. But would she say the same about famed black Vanderbilt University Law Professor and Obama supporter Carol Swain? Swain has said “I think that by not releasing it [the full birth certificate], it makes people much more passionately opposed to the president. Moreover, for a president who was elected on the basis of his personal background, it is troubling that Obama himself would want to withhold such basic information.”

The media’s curiosity about the background of those running for national office seemed to know no bounds when it came to George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard or the sexual behavior of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s daughter. But during and since the 2008 campaign a virtual wall of silence has been constructed around Obama.

This has important implications for the country. Questions about Obama’s family and his relationship to Islam, for example, and hence his world view, remain subjects of speculation. Former CIA officer Larry Johnson, for example, believes that the full birth record from the State of Hawaii would probably show Obama was adopted by his step-father, the Indonesian Muslim Lolo Soetoro, became formally known for a time as “Barry Soetoro,” and may even list Obama’s religion as Muslim. This would completely change what Obama has said about his past and represent a public fraud of a very significant magnitude.

At the very least it might help explain Obama’s strange discomfort with exercising American power against radical Muslim regimes in Libya and elsewhere, where he has farmed out the defense of American interests to the United Nations, and his insistence on “dialogue” with rogue Muslim regimes in Syria and Iran. All of this while touting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Al Qaeda-associated Muslim opposition groups in Libya as democracy-craving freedom fighters.

Some of the missing details of Obama’s life are doubtlessly trivial. Obama probably has benign explanations for not providing more information about them. Even Trump admits that the evidence strongly suggests Obama was born in Hawaii and is an American citizen. But that Obama has not yet released this information, and that the media refuses to criticize him for not doing so, is a testament not to the insanity of the “birthers,” but to Obama’s penchant for secrecy, and the dangerous amount of latitude the media has been willing to cede him.

[Seth Forman is author of the forthcoming book American Obsession: Race and Conflict in the Age of Obama (Booklocker).]

Articles written by Seth Forman
Tags: birth certificate, citizenship, foreign policy, Muslim, Soetoro, Trump
Categories: Media, News, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

7 Responses to “Trump Scores an Important Victory…Over the Media”

Tom | April 11th, 2011 at 3:14 pm

I don’t understand why he went the birther route to attack Obama from; especially when he, Trump, says he likely was born on U.S. soil. Makes it easy to chalk it up to Trump bravado.

If Trump had asked why the media isn’t asking the questions related to Obama’s relationships with Ayers and Wright, I think it would have garnered significantly more public interest, and shed some light on issues people had not been given the opportunity to consider. For the most part, I think most people have their minds made up regarding the citizenship issue.

Lisa | April 11th, 2011 at 3:50 pm

Trump mentioned Ayers today on Fox News when he said that Obama did not have any experience in making deals except for those he made with Ayers prior to becoming president. He said that the deals Obama made with Ayers needs further investigating as though Trump himself may investigate.

Donald is not done. He has the where with all to investigate Obama in ways the MSM never has done. Interestingly, the MSM keep inviting Trump on their programs to talk about his potential candidacy and they ask him about the birth certificate issue as though he is crazy to pursue it. It never fails that the liberal reporter is left dumbfounded and speechless because they can never one up Trump on the birth certificate or his position on a variety of other issues. This is giving Trump incredible face time with the nation.

I agree that he is playing an important role right now regardless how far he takes it. He truly is the only person bold enough to publicly question Obama on the very issues that should have been discussed during his campaign for presidency.

Tom Carter | April 11th, 2011 at 4:55 pm

Tom, I think you’re right that most people have their minds made up on the citizenship issue — regardless of the facts. The only thing we know for sure is that he has a document from Hawaii that’s good enough to establish citizenship, get a passport, etc. The whole thing boils down to petty politics as usual. If this were George W. Bush, the Democrats (and the media) would be all over him about the birth certificate. There are much more important issues to deal with — assuming someone doesn’t come up with “magic bullet” proof that O was born in Kenya, Indonesia, etc.

Lisa, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Donald doesn’t have his own investigators working on all sorts of things. He’s already said that his people have been at work in Hawaii, but he hasn’t revealed what they’ve found — if anything. And I agree that Trump is playing an important role; I just wish he’d picked a primary issue other than the birth certificate. As for the media, as much as they want to protect Obama, they’ll keep showcasing Trump for the same reason they’ve given Charlie Sheen so much air time — everybody loves a good show and the ratings that come with it!

Tom | April 11th, 2011 at 8:31 pm

Tom, the fact that the Clinton camp didn’t make a bigger issue out of the citizenship during the primaries leads me to believe there is no reason to. I believe I read in Dick Morris’ book, that they didn’t draw attention to Wright because he counseled her and Bill while dealing with Bill’s infidelity.

Tom Carter | April 11th, 2011 at 11:05 pm

That’s one of the most convincing anti-birther arguments of all — that the Clintons didn’t go after the issue during the primaries. I don’t know about Wright being involved with the Clintons, but I’d guess they didn’t make more of his links to Obama because they didn’t want to get involved in another race issue.

Lisa | April 12th, 2011 at 6:05 am

I think Hilary Clinton felt just as restrained as anyone else over what issues to bring up against Obama for fear of being called a racist.

I think Trump IS covering other issues other than the birth certificate. In fact he is covering more ground than anyone else at this point.

David | April 16th, 2011 at 1:25 pm

In spite of the fact that he is covering other issues these are clearly overshadowed by Obama’s birth certificate and I would like to hear Trump’s opinion on some of the most daunting problems the country faces today such as national security or economy.