The Morning Briefing: Twitter Fainting Couch, Political Violence, Impeachment Tantrums and Much, Much More

Good Monday morning. Welcome to today’s “it’s virtually a holiday” edition of The Morning Briefing.

Here is what is on the President’s agenda today:

The president is out of town today.
He is scheduled to return this evening and will be in D.C. for the 4th of July celebration.

Trump tweets, media hardest hit. Literally.

I have almost no energy to talk about this — it’s beyond foolish.

On Sunday morning, President Trump tweeted out a gif of him wrestling and beating up “CNN.” The smart people on Twitter went crazy. Much of the news cycle was spent “analyzing” the tweet — the media and their henchmen clutching their pearls, screaming that the tweet was inciting violence. Some called on Twitter to ban the president for violating the terms of service for his “violent” tweet. (ISIS, which engages in actual violence, is all over Twitter, by the way.)

Is the media-as-victim an effective strategy to “fight” the president and the GOP? The media is undoubtedly the president’s political opponent, a fact that is recognized and manifested explicitly now that Trump is in office, whereas before, the GOP treated the media as a respected, neutral institution.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has condemned the president’s “incitement” to violence.

“We condemn the president’s threat of physical violence against journalists. This tweet is beneath the office of the presidency. Sadly, it is not beneath this president,” Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement,. “No one should be threatened with physical harm for doing their jobs. Journalists are your neighbors, they’re your friends.”

Are you confused by this sudden concern over “incitement to violence”? Do you wonder why the media quickly memory-holed the actual violence of the attempted assassination on GOP congressmen by a Democrat Bernie Sanders campaign activist but obsess over a tweet by the President? Or do you wonder why the media soiled itself over an NRA/Dana Loesch video highlighting the pattern of violence by the left claiming that chronicling violence is itself a call to violence? You are not alone.

Our own Pat Poole has a nice round-up of the Twitter fainting couch’s response to the Trump tweet. Here’s what the celebrities are saying.

Allow me to continue my rant against the selective concern over violence because…

Here come the protests

Axios’ sneak peak email alerts readers to the new #resist effort to bombard GOPers while home for the 4th of July holiday. The Washington Post writes:

Then again, at least they have released information about where they will be. That’s more than most Senate Republicans have done at the start of a 10-day break wrapped around the nation’s Independence Day celebration. This creates the belief among liberal activists that Republicans are trying to hide, which in turn primes every public moment to become that much more confrontational.

I don’t blame them for hiding, if, in fact, they are. If I were advising these Republicans, I would tell them to spend their vacation on a charity mission. These #resist protests have gotten violent, and I don’t mean Trump-tweet snowflake violent, I mean actual violence. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher had a staffer get cold-cocked by a “resister” and one congressman was run off the road by a nutter. Why no warnings about the coming violence from the #resist crowd?

Axios reports in its email:

Activists are publicizing at least 5 progressive health care rallies in Alaska to pressure Lisa Murkowski, 5 in Jeff Flake’s Arizona, 8 in Cory Gardner’s Colorado, 7 in Bill Cassidy’s Louisiana, 9 in Susan Collins’ Maine, 3 in Dean Heller’s Nevada, 3 in Rob Portman’s Ohio, 1 in Pat Toomey’s Pennsylvania, and 3 in Shelley Moore Capito’s West Virginia.
Liberal groups mobilizing include Planned Parenthood, Indivisible, Moveon.org, OFA, Families USA, Save My Care, AFSCME, SEIU, Center for American Progress and many others.
Activists are also populating online geographical hubs, like “Resistance Near Me,” to direct progressives to protest their Republican House member or senator.
The health care consumers’ group, Families USA, has released an “action toolkit” for activists to “make the Senate feel the heat” over the recess.
Moveon.org has published high-quality downloadable images of health care signs that protesters can print off easily and bring to July Fourth parades and other rallies.

Protestors marched for impeachment yesterday

Maybe you missed the marches because you were like me and spent the Sunday of a long holiday weekend living your life and not engaging in political protest or surfing the internet or performing on Twitter, but there were marches across the U.S. on Sunday urging the impeachment of President Trump.

Thousands took to the streets in L.A.

The march was one of 45 sister marches in cities across the nation including New Orleans, Seattle, Philadelphia and New York City.

In Manhattan, protesters chanted outside Trump International Hotel and Tower at Columbus Circle and Central Park West, CBS New York reports.

“I think Donald Trump is the least competent person who has ever held the Oval Office,” one marcher told the station.

“We believe President Trump has committed constitutional breaches, consistently lied, cheated and enforces laws that primarily benefit him and his billionaire friends at the expense of the country,” says the organization’s website, impeachmentmarch.org.

I’d love to see someone attend one of these events and ask the protestors if they know what the process for impeachment is. I bet most of them don’t know. HINT: it doesn’t involve protesting in your concentrated, like-minded neighborhoods.

I’m not crying, you’re crying

Let’s take a break from the ugly business of politics and media nastiness to watch this fantastic story.