President Trump And The Press

President Trump And The Press

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Just recently I took my wife downtown for an eye exam.  While waiting I sat in a chair looking at a TV screen tuned to a national news channel.  The two heads, one female and one male were discussing the appearance of that Russian warship thirty miles off the East Coast in international water.  Bear in mind the ship was in international waters, free to any ship in the world.  In this day and age when ships are actual anachronisms from an earlier age, the ship was no threat to the United States, but the young woman was irate because the President wasn’t doing anything about it.  The President has no jurisdiction on the open seas.  There was nothing he could legally do about it.

The President earlier had said:  ‘I know what you want me to do, blow it out of the water.  I’m not going to do that.’  So much for the hysterical Liberal fear that if Trump was elected he was going to immediately get us into war.  Not that Obama hadn’t had us there for eight of his eight year term.

The President was right, even aggrieved that pressure was being placed on him to take extreme action.   In his place I would have invited the ship into New York harbor to give the sailors a little R&R.  Wouldn’t that be mature?  I know when I was a sailor that I would have liked that a lot.  Show the men a little of NYC.  Russian sailors would have been gaga.  Let them see the thousands of women and not a few men milling around wearing their pussies on their heads.  That would be something to talk about back home.  Then after a week of glorious shore leave I would have given them each a little bag of cookies, bigger for the Captain, and sent them on their way.

What with satellite  surveillance keeping watch from the sky what additional would there have been for them to see that couldn’t be seen except a bunch of looney rioters.

Heck, with satellites we can virtually be on the ship’s deck at sea and even listen in on their conversations.  Satellites! Wow!

It’s a new global world folks.

But then, as I sat watching this female head demanding the President do something about it, I realized that this dippy girl, fresh from some hothouse college like Vassar, no real experience in the real world, had no means to evaluate the situation.  Hell, in 1957 my little Destroyer Escort, 306 feet long, steel from stem to stern, with 180 men of steel aboard was sent alone through the Straits of Formosa.

At that time Taiwan and China were in a shooting war and our presence was supposed to terrorize the Chinese, keep them in their place.  Sure, no fear, but we did it.  Carefully staying in international waters twenty-five miles from shore we passed Quemoy and Matsu islands that were only a few miles from the shore, maybe fifteen miles from us and we could see the cannon blazing away from both sides.  These guys were at this all day long every day.  Nothing would have been easier than to blow us out of the water but apparently we had so terrorized them, not unlike the girl on TV, that they didn’t dare.  So, in a way as far as the Russian ship goes I’d been there and done that.

But, watching the dippy girl and equally dippy guy I realized that they and probably most of the press aren’t qualified for their jobs.  Nor can they be replaced by qualified people.  At least not that young.

Many of the press that torment the President are old enough but the women don’t have the requisite experience and the men probably evaded the maturing experience of the military by carrying those student deferments to the limit  signing up for grad school, post grad school and permanent school.

They don’t have a clue.  This President is just going to have to put up with them as though they are little kids, take them by the hand and lead them through the maze of politics.

Stay cool, don’t get frustrated, treat them like the applicants on your Apprentice reality TV show.