67/3/18
Donald Trump and his always enabling press secretary Sarah Sanders charged there was a "double standard" when a television network apologized for a racist comment made about a top aide to Barack Obama but didn't apologize to the current president for its critical remarks about him. This was sheer narcissism. There was no cause for an apology to Trump. But a double standard does exist in the political dialogue and media coverage. Sometimes it works against Trump. But more often, it works to his advantage. Let's look at how this works. Hypothetically, after the 2012 attack in Benghazi where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed, suppose that Obama, amid conflicting reports on what happened, called the ambassador's family and said, "This is what he signed up for." That's what Trump did last year when four American special-forces soldiers were killed in Niger by terrorists. He initially denied making the comment, which then was confirmed by one soldier's widow and by a congresswoman who was on the call. Trump also falsely charged that Obama never contacted families of slain veterans.
Critics used to call Clinton "slick Willie." Imagine the reaction if he had accused the New York Times of fabricating a story about a fictional White House. That's what Trump did last week, though, as he surely knew, the story was based on a briefing for hundreds of reporters by White House aide Matthew Pottinger. Or suppose Obama had gone to the U.S. Naval Academy and claimed he had given the military its first pay raise in 10 years. That was Trump's boast at Annapolis last week, although the military has gotten pay raises every year since 1983. The president also lied about his proposed naval buildup, as documented by Associated Press fact-checkers. It doesn’t matter if Trump’s lying is pathological or if it’s all calculated. The thousands of untruths and misdeeds -- the abuse of power and possible illegalities -- would not have been countenanced before. That's a double standard.
