This is all fine and normal


This morning the President of the United States, in response to an accurate news report that made him look bad, threatened the license of a national broadcast network:

It happens to be the broadcast network that employs me. I’d hope, however, that such a thing angers people who don’t work for NBC. I mean, I get that he’s mad, but the most powerful member of the United States government threatening the media because it criticized him is, if not the most un-American thing ever, certainly in the top-10.

I’m pretty sure if Obama had said this about Fox News in 2010 there would be talk of impeaching him. Short of that, it’d dominate the news cycle for several weeks and be cited in the rants of conservatives for years and years. Now, I presume, we’ll just chalk it up to “Trump being Trump” and stagger on to the next unnecessary crisis he creates or legitimate crisis he neglects.

In the meantime, Trump can take my NBC WordPress login from my cold dead hands. Or whatever it is people say in such situations. Sorry, I’m new to this “living under a petulant dictator” thing. We all are. 

Craig Calcaterra

Craig is the author of the daily baseball (and other things) newsletter, Cup of Coffee. He writes about other things at Craigcalcaterra.com. He lives in New Albany, Ohio with his wife, two kids, and many cats.