Trump Attacks TV News Figures for Coverage

Just as the some of the media is normalizing Neo-Nazi groups and their message of hate and intolerance, Der Fuhrer or Lord Voldermort, if you prefer, Donald Trump met yesterday with heads of major television news outlets and basically whined that he did not like their portrayal of him and/or his Nazi henchmen-like advisers and sycophants.  The goal in Trump's mind?  To make the media part of his propaganda machine and, of course, stroke his insatiable ego and narcissism.  It's obvious that Trump still has no clue that as president, he will be under a microscope and everything he does will be open to attack and/or commentary.  NPR looks at Trump's desire to co-opt the news media.  Here are excerpts:

Earlier Monday at Trump Tower in New York City, President-elect Donald Trump, top aides and advisers including Kellyanne Conway, Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer met with executives and anchors from five major television networks. Trump used the opportunity to admonish the network's journalists and executives for what he said was the networks' unfair coverage of him.

Among the participants from the news side were ABC's George Stephanopoulos and David Muir, NBC's Lester Holt and NBC news president Deborah Turness, CBS's John Dickerson, Gayle King, and Norah O'Donnell, Fox News' Bill Shine and Jay Wallace, MSNBC's Phil Griffin, and CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Zucker. The meeting's content was to be off-the-record but many participants were photographed as they entered through the Trump Tower lobby. The New York Post's Page Six gossip site had a detailed version that appeared to put the event in the most contentious light possible.

Trump lit out after Zucker, criticizing his former business partner (Zucker was head of NBC during Trump's Apprentice franchise on the network) for CNN. He turned then to NBC, saying it was the worst, criticizing its reporters, and saying it could not even come up with a flattering picture to broadcast. His complaint: the network's photographs showed him with multiple chins.

Trump said he wanted a relationship with the press that was "cordial and productive." CBS's Gayle King asked what would constitute such a relationship but it wasn't clear what that meant beyond off the record meetings such as that one.

The participant who spoke to NPR said Trump appeared as though he was irritated but working the refs, as when then President George W. Bush complained the press was acting as the filter of his remarks and policies. However a second source - a network official debriefed by colleagues who attended - said it did not feel like a reset of the relationship to them.

The off-the-record meeting lasted about an hour. And Trump posted a video on social media - bypassing the conventional press - to explain to the public, on the record, how the presidential transition was proceeding.

My thoughts: guess what asshole, you DO have multiple chins. Moreover, no one has an obligation to build you up or the foul policies that will likely flow from your regime.  Get over it.