“Former President Trump on Monday insisted he does not want to ‘terminate’ the Constitution, responding to broad backlash after he said over the weekend its rules and laws should be disregarded so he can return to the White House,” reports The Hill on its top story as of 6:09 PM EST Monday, carrying fatass’s water and more than enough orange Kool-Aid mix to go with it. There was no “insist,” it was simply Donald trying to gaslight his way out of another self-created clusterfuck.
We rag on The Hill quite a lot here. Much of it is the product of a mostly one-sided and comically exaggerated personal vendetta against them, a dislike many of our readers share. This however is certainly more serious than complaining about the terrible moderation of their now-canceled comments sections or mocking some bullshit Jonathan Turley piece. The headline above is straight up malpractice, implying Trump walked back his insane rant when he did nothing of the sort.
Now this is the part where I was supposed to say Mediaite, the Daily Beast, and Political Wire got it right. Mediaite I don’t think very highly of, and their headline “‘DISINFORMATION & LIES!’ Trump Tries to Walk Back Call to Terminate Constitution By Lashing Out at Media For Reporting His Comments” is a mixed bag that does nothing to disabuse that feeling. The “Trump Tries to Walk Back” part is giving him way more credit than he deserves, but the rest is an honest assessment. What’s worse is they had it right the first time, you can see from the Disqus thread that the headline was originally “Trump Claims Media Lied About Call to Suspend Constitution.” The Daily Beast and Political Wire I expected better from than “Trump Backtracks After Absurd Call for ‘Termination’ of the Constitution” and “Trump Backs Off Call to ‘Terminate’ Constitution,” respectively. Both are sourced from The Hill’s lame reporting above. Unsurprisingly Raw Story nails it. They suck in a lot of unique and interesting ways but this time their usually hyperbolic tone hit the right pitch with “Trump furiously denies calling for ‘termination’ of the Constitution in wild new rant.” Politico does too with “Trump denies he suggested ‘termination’ of Constitution, without deleting post” as their headline.
Look, we’re not perfect. We fuck up constantly. I actually didn’t even fully read the original Trump post on Saturday before I put it up and was unaware he had specifically written “terminate” the Constitution until the other guys reported it. I would’ve made that the headline, not just that he again wanted to be declared the winner retroactively. I dropped the ball on that. This isn’t he without sin casting the first stone. This is just throwing stones because it’s fun. And throwing props to the guys who got it right. I don’t even want to mention our own article on the post (well besides to bring up that we beat all of them, Mediaite came in second four minutes after us).
The point is that I would like to think that when we’re looking at this batshittery thoroughly we characterize it clearly. Trump was furious about the way he was being covered and threw a tantrum over it. That’s it. To ascribe any sort of regret or contrition to it is just another in a very long string of examples of what a terrible product The Hill puts out. For Daily Beast and Political Wire to parrot that characterization is in a lot of ways even worse. They’re better than this. The Hill isn’t.