No, Let’s NOT “Give Him a Chance — NOT in 2017, NOT Ever

Somebody explain to me why Americans should keep giving more chances to — and making more excuses for — a President-Elect who refuses to answer the simplest questions at his own press conference.

Yeah, I watched it…most of it…as much as I could stomach, anyway, that Wednesday morning on January 11th. Once again, I simply couldn’t believe what was happening in this, our democracy. If The Donald, in all his unrestrained splendor, didn’t like any questions posed by any reporter, he simply didn’t answer the question. Period.

Even when he did “answer” a question he didn’t especially like, his “answer” offered no real information pertinent to the initial question. He’d just brush it off or interrupt the reporter or make a lame joke. As if to further emphasize his disdain for the question, a small clique of loyalists were waiting in the wings, ready to burst into applause whenever their hero dismissed the inquiry.

Case in point: a valid question about his income tax returns.

He recited once again, as had been his custom on the campaign trail, that he couldn’t release them because of the audit.

When pressed further, he bristled. The reporter asked him if he didn’t think the American people deserved some answers about his tax returns. He responded by attacking the press: yet another typical smart-ass retort about reporters being the only ones who really cared about his tax returns, no one else really cared.

Suddenly, a loud smattering of cheers and applause from the other side of the room broke out, then quickly died down. After all, how long could a handful of die-hard supporters clap before their “support” started to sound pathetically staged and phony? Not too long, thank God.

Does this guy really need to have that kind of hoopla at his own press conference? In a word, yes. Yes he does. It not only puffs him up, it draws everyone’s attention away from the fact that he’s eroding both our cherished freedoms of speech and of the press.

Slowly but surely Mr. Trump is ensuring that his voice is the only one who can speak freely. Reporters, citizens, and his critics alike must shut up in his America. Slowly but surely he is manipulating American media so that only information he likes and wants will be reported and circulated. Those who refuse to shut up will end up as his new enemies du jour in his latest Twitter rant.

Just the way CNN News is now.

Poor CNN reporter Jim Acosta. His employer CNN merely reported what American Intelligence agencies had shared with President Obama and President-Elect Trump last week. Without going into embarrassing and salacious detail, CNN merely reported that Russia had some compromising info on Trump that could be used against him — and that Trump had been briefed on it. That was it. And for that, Trump punished Acosta by refusing to take any of his questions at the press conference.

Mature, real mature.

What made Trump’s actions so childish? His knee-jerk retaliation against a reporter and news organization after they had taken the high road and had refrained from describing the notoriously lewd details contained in the summary presented to Trump. Because the contents of the intel weren’t able to be verified or corroborated, CNN withheld from broadcasting these perverted details. And yet, Trump publicly retaliated against CNN on Twitter and against Jim Acosta on live TV.

Talk about scapegoating the wrong party! The real “villain” in Trump’s scenario was BuzzFeed — the online news/info organization that chose to publish the 35-page memo/summary that was discussed at last week’s briefing. BuzzFeed — NOT CNN — chose to include all the sexually disgusting descriptions of what the Russians had on Trump. BuzzFeed posted this summary online in all its salacious glory.

How salacious was it?

Can you spell urolagnia?
Or urophilia?
Do you even know what those words mean?

Feel free, gentle reader, to find those definitions with a Google online or a peek in your dictionary. Just be sure you’re sitting down first.

This writer cannot begin to tell you what those forms of salirophilia really mean, thanks to the standards The Richfield Patch imposes on its Star Patchers (like me). But if I told you, you would really get grossed out.

So it’s understandable that Trump was upset about these unproven allegations the Russians had on him. What’s mystifying is why he attacked and punished the news organization that refused to discuss what the Russians had on him. It seems that The Donald arbitrarily decided to blast CNN in some inexplicable, demagogic hissy fit.

After all, CNN never mentioned the sex videos with Trump and his leaky call girls at that Moscow hotel back in 2013. No one at CNN talked about this “kompromat” (compromising material) or how it might be used to blackmail Trump. No one at CNN discussed any “disguised bribes” or other “deals” that could be used to influence The Donald after he became President of The United States.

CNN didn’t report about allegations of these memos because they hadn’t been properly verified. However, this information, it turns out, had been around for months before the election.

Although CNN’s report hadn’t been verified, BuzzFeed posted a 35-page memo online, the one on which the shorter memo used in the briefing was based. (Or so they say.) So a lot of people went to their computers and read all about Trump’s alleged lewdness without any help from CNN.

Because this report was derogatory towards Trump, of course, Trump has denounced it as “Fake News.” Of course. Whatever The Donald dislikes is proclaimed by him as “A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT.” or “lies made up by his enemies designed to destroy him.”

Actually, members of the press have been A LOT kinder to Trump than he’s ever been to them. They could’ve gotten really nasty about this latest snafu by simply describing what was in the summary. But they didn’t. In fact, journalists everywhere are respectively reporting that the material in question is salacious — not lecherous, lustful, or bawdy — because salacious sounds more Presidential than those other sexier adjectives.

But as usual, Trump’s missing the point. His emotional over-reaction belies BuzzFeed’s decision to publish this material for all to see. And it’s a decision that deserves to be defended.

It doesn’t matter if this salacious material the Russians had on Trump was true or not. What mattered was that they had something on Trump with which they could use to blackmail, bribe, or influence him. What mattered was that it illustrated the modus operandi — or M.O — of an insidiously subversive intelligence agency from a country that might always be our enemy, not our ally. Maybe the Russians themselves aren’t sure if they want to be friends, enemies, or frenemies. That’s why they’re accumulating dirt on The Donald while simultaneously trying to help him get into The White House.

What this revelation should show Trump is that he’s being played by Putin. And he’s not as crafty as he thinks he is because Putin, this former head of the KGB, is craftier than he ever imagined. Putin is not the kind of world leader he would ever be able to “make a deal with.” He’s not a good bud. He’s sneaky, and he’s dangerous.

Here’s what probably happened. While Trump was praising Putin as a better leader than Obama, Putin directed hacking to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton…But he was also devising ways to control and manipulate Trump once he became President of The United States.

Instead of experiencing an epiphany after this briefing from US intelligence and wising up, Trump continued with his mini vendettas against Saturday Night Live. But after January 20th, his puerile behavior will become Presidential petulance — and that’s not just sad anymore, it’s also downright scary.

Wake up, America, before it’s too late. Stop trying to extend tolerance towards such an intolerant man.