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November 29, 2019

Afghanistan Thanksgiving: Trump makes the press look like boobs

By Monica Showalter

For the U.S. troops abroad, President Trump made a major personal sacrifice by skipping his own Thanksgiving in order to surprise them by helping to serve them theirs.  Under cover of secrecy, he flew nearly 7,000 miles, met with them, praised and cheered them, took selfies with them, served them in the chow line, and generally gave the brave fighting men and women in the world's most forlorn hellhole something to smile about.  It was a lovely presidential gesture, well in keeping with past presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who also made holiday trips to cheer the troops.

But unlike them, he also had a goodie for us back home: he managed to expose the press as presumptuous boobs.  Newsweek was the easiest mark:

This is the story probably from the original, which apparently got deleted.  Newsweek meant to criticize Trump for golfing on Thanksgiving, which actually would have been an acceptable thing for him to do, given that it was a holiday and every chief executive needs what project managers call "maintenance time." 

Newsweek wasn't the only one.  CBS's media big Mark Knoller was an easy mark for Trump's trap, too:

Oh, how he researched that!  Oh, how he wanted to convince us Trump was a pleasure-seeking, lazy, good-for-nothing layabout.  He tried.  He really tried.  And all for nothing!

Soon enough, they had to change it, because what they were reporting was mere speculation, premised on someone seeing a black car go into a golf course, which might have been a diversionary tactic from Trump, knowing that these people don't bother to actually verify facts before reporting.  Newsweek got snared easily on that one, which tells us a lot about its other reporting.

Here's how Newsweek had to modify it:

The twitterati had a ball with that one.  Here's my favorite:

And Trump got the last word. According to The Hill:

"I thought Newsweek was out of business?" Trump said with a retweet of his son Donald Trump Jr.'s tweet that placed a screenshot of Newsweek's story next to photos of the president in Afghanistan where he made a surprise visit U.S. troops on the holiday.

Except for the press, a good time was had by all.  Trump got out the laser pointer again, and Newsweek's cats went running.

Image credit: VOA/AP via shareable Twitter screen shot.

 

 

 

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