The enemy
By 
Donald Trump feted a murderous tyrant at the White House today; a man whose most notable accomplishment was ordering the torture, murder, and dismemberment of a dissident journalist. Another journalist was insolent enough to ask him about this:
President Trump assailed an American journalist in the Oval Office on Tuesday for asking Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, about the violent death of a Washington Post columnist at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. U.S. intelligence has said the attack was carried out on the prince’s orders.
“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Mr. Trump told the journalist, Mary Bruce of ABC News, later referring to her query as “a horrible, insubordinate[!!!], and just a terrible question.”
“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the murdered journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.” The prince has denied involvement in the killing.
The president also referred to ABC as a “crappy company” and said that the network’s broadcasting license “should be taken away.” He said that his top broadcast regulator, Brendan Carr, whose agency grants licenses to local stations, “should look at that.”
The exchange occurred during Prince Mohammed’s first visit to the United States since Mr. Khashoggi’s death and dismemberment by Saudi agents. His death provoked international condemnation.
Mr. Trump appeared deeply frustrated with Ms. Bruce, the chief White House correspondent at ABC News. He insulted her again after she asked another question about why Mr. Trump had not unilaterally ordered the release of files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“It’s not the question that I mind; it’s your attitude,” Mr. Trump told Ms. Bruce, in scolding tones. “I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions.” He added: “You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter.”
The National Press Club criticized Mr. Trump’s remarks in a statement on Tuesday, saying that the death of Mr. Khashoggi was “a direct attack on press freedom.”
“Statements that appear to minimize or excuse the killing of a journalist have real-world consequences,” the group said. “They can undermine the essential principle that journalists must be able to work without fear of violence or retribution.”
Although Mr. Trump routinely denigrates the press, he also fields dozens of questions from White House correspondents over the course of a week, sometimes meeting with journalists several times in one day. He has doled out vitriol to both men and women, though women have faced some of his fiercest insults.
I’m going to assume some high-ranking editor insisted on inserting that astonishing last graph, equal parts “but he gives great copy” and “yeah he’s a misogynist but he’s also mean to men.”
LGM commenter MacCheerful did a header into the cesspool that is the comments at The Very Serious Intellectual Publication of the American Right [National Review for those of you puking at home]:
National Review went to the trouble of briefly front paging a story about Trump saying “Things Happen”. This is the most popular comment to that story:
Khashoggi wasn’t a “journalist”. He was trying to overthrow the King. Henry the Eighth and his daughters would have tortured and executed such a person … and did multiple times.
By not issuing a meaningless condemnation, President Trump gained a favor to be granted later, the Abraham Accords which will result in many saved lives and prosperity. The World is better off.
This reminded me of something:
Your dreaded Principal has included in a speech full of points something like an apology for the banquet which he has set before us. Well, gentledevils, no one blames him. But it would be in vain to deny that the human souls on whose anguish we have been feasting tonight were of pretty poor quality. Not all the most skillful cookery of our tormentors could make them better than insipid.
Oh, to get one’s teeth again into a Farinata, a Henry VIII, or even a Hitler! There was real crackling there; something to crunch; a rage, an egotism, a cruelty only just less robust than our own. It put up a
delicious resistance to being devoured. It warmed your inwards when you’d got it down.
C.S. Lewis, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” (Note that the phrase “even a Hitler” means in this context not quite as deliciously depraved as the utterly monstrous Henry VIII.)
Make no mistake: Trump and his supporters are the enemy, just as surely, and indeed much more so, than a despicable murderer at the head of a theocratic nightmare like Saudi Arabia.
There can be no compromise with these people. I don’t know how to crush them and everything they represent, but that doesn’t affect the reality that this is what needs to happen, if this country is to be a decent place again.