White House says it can punish reporters over Gulf name dispute
The White House’s attempt at regulating language used by independent media mark a sharp escalation in President Donald Trump’s often fraught dealings with news organizations.
Who cares what the gulf is called ... keep pushing the government on other more important issues.
The goal of the whole renaming stupidity is distraction and deflection ... keep everyone occupied and angry over stupid meaningless things while you go somewhere and do shit you don't want people talking about.
Journalists should just ignore the whole gulf idiocy and move on to talking about real important things like what the hell is an unelected billionaire doing in running government.
Exactly. This is distraction central. Plus, administration access only gives reporters more bullshit these days. Sitting in a Musk Administration ministry of propaganda gathering is not a prestige position.
My problem is, while its a distraction, its also a way to test the firet amendment
i hope the ap keeps pushing the button here. it's a pretty lame hill for lord diaper to die on, but fuck him. he chose it.
i've been calling him the 'wrong' name for years. it's free speech, mr asshole-who-thinks-he's-in-charge.
I have to wonder if this is a “silly” way for them to test powers of censorship and media/reality manipulation. This can be written off as “trivial,” or what have you, but scary changes happen in small increments.
The 'trivial' part is intentional and has to do with conditioning this admin's supporters. There's a clear pattern of trying to make opposition "cry wolf" on issues that the republican base either agrees with the party on, or ideally dismiss as being entirely unimportant. It's important (to them) for the MAGA base to not only distrust, but revile sources of information that don't tow the line.
So the left sees this issue as a blatant erosion of 1st amendment rights and the right sees a stupid hissy fit about the name of a body of water most of them will never see. When both sides aren't even close to agreeing whether there even is a problem, they definitely won't band together to stop the overreach in power.
First amendment?
I can just see the Toddler-in-chief balling up his tiny little fists and stamping his tiny little feet and shouting, "Can SO!"