Fake News

Time praised Obama, trashed Trump in 'Person of the Year' profile

By EDDIE SCARRY (@escarry) • 12/8/16 12:01 AM
President-elect Trump was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" on Wednesday, just as then-President-elect Obama received the same distinction in 2008 after winning that election.

But that's where the similarities stop.

While Trump's write-up in Time is a "for better or worse" overview of his victory, laced with ambivalence. Obama's was a far more hopeful and confident look at the historical nature of his coming presidency.

Here's a look at how Trump was described by Time on Tuesday compared to what the magazine said of Obama eight years ago.

On Obama in 2008: "For having the confidence to sketch that kind of future in this gloomy hour and for showing the competence that makes Americans hopeful that he will pull it off, Barack Obama is Time's Person of the Year for 2008."

On Trump in 2016: "For reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears ... Donald Trump is Time's 2016 Person of the Year."

Obama: "Understandably, you may be thinking Obama is on the cover for these big and flashy reasons: for ushering the country across a momentous symbolic line, for infusing our democracy with a new intensity of participation, for showing the world and ourselves that our most cherished myth — the one about boundless opportunity — has plenty of juice left in it. … [But i]n the waning days of his extraordinary year and on the cusp of his presidency, what now seems most salient about Obama is the opposite of flashy, the antithesis of rhetoric: he gets things done."

Trump: "This real estate baron and casino owner turned reality-TV star and provocateur — never a day spent in public office, never a debt owed to any interest besides his own — now surveys the smoking ruin of a vast political edifice that once housed parties, pundits, donors, pollsters, all those who did not see him coming or take him seriously. Out of this reckoning, Trump is poised to preside, for better or worse."

Obama: "His arrival on the scene feels like a step into the next century — his genome is global, his mind is innovative, his world is networked, and his spirit is democratic. Perhaps it takes a new face to see the promise in a future that now looks dark."

Trump: "Now it's difficult to count all the ways Trump remade the game: the huckster came off more real than the scripted political pros."

Obama: "Obama's competence fills him with a genuine self-confidence."

Trump: "The demagogue won more Latino and black votes than the 2012 Republican nominee."

Obama: "In some tellings, Obama's journey to the White House started with his little-noticed but carefully nuanced speech against the Iraq war in 2002. In other versions, it began with his electrifying address to the Democratic Convention in 2004."

Trump: "His rhetoric had in fact opened up a new public square, where racists and misogynists could boast of their views and claim themselves validated."

Obama: "He made moderates feel hopeful, and even among many core Republicans who did not ultimately vote for him, Obama inspired admiration."

Trump: "This is a land where a man will stand up in a plane headed to Allentown, Pa., to demand allegiance to the new leader — 'We got some Hillary bitches on here? Come on man, Trump! He's your president, every goddamn one of you!' — and then get banned by the airline from ever traveling again. It's where a hijab-wearing college student in New York reports being attacked and jeered at in the next president's name, where American-born children ask their citizen parents if Trump will deport them, where white supremacists throw out Nazi salutes in Washington meeting halls for their President-elect."

Obama: "Obama is a businesslike boss."

Trump: "This is the method of a demagogue."

Fake journalist Brian Williams, who was suspended from the NBC Nightly News anchor slot for reporting fake news and lost the job altogether — and is now relegated to an MSNBC position — slammed fake news on MSNBC on Thursday.
“Fake news played a role in this election and continues to find a wide audience,” Williams said, before attacking retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn—President-elect Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser—and Breitbart News Network.

It’s curious that Williams is becoming the face of the legacy and establishment media charge against “fake news,” the matter that such media luminaries are rallying around to blame their widely inaccurate reporting of the 2016 presidential election. Williams lost his slot as anchor of the NBC Nightly News after he made up scores of accounts, passing off completely fabricated stories as journalism.

In fact, back in early 2015, Breitbart News presented a list of at least 32 times that NBC News let Williams present such fake news to the American people—lies and disputed stories—including his false claims about being in a helicopter that was hit by an RPG.

Williams also made up stories about Seal Team 6, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Pope, Hurricane Katrina, quitting college, rescuing a puppy from a house fire, and more.

Williams was suspended, handing the NBC Nightly News to its current anchor Lester Holt, and then, after a great deal of time, was reinstated over at MSNBC—the openly partisan progressive cable news network.