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The news media has a shaky grasp of the Constitution. It’s true the 1st Amendment promises freedom of the press, but the Constitution does not promise immunity to criticism. President Trump is free to voice his opinion of journalists.

The president has some justification for his anger. Over 90 percent of the coverage of his administration is negative. This ceaseless assault makes news coverage during the Bush administration look like the ‘era of good feelings.’

One could certainly make a case that when the president called the opposition media “enemies of the people” he was going too far, even though the phrase originally came from leftist hero Maximilien Robespierre.

What do we call a national institution that seeks to amplify, if not generate, discord? An institution that works overtime to delegitimize law enforcement? A collection of self-appointed cultural monitors that holds average citizens and, particularly those who are white, in utter contempt?

Ungrateful. Negative. Sneering. Haughty. Biased. All those words are accurate descriptions of the majority of the U.S. news media. If you think I’m exaggerating, look no farther than the news coverage of last weekend’s “Torchlight Nazi Party Rally” in D.C.

Whoops, my mistake. Organizers couldn’t even afford Tiki torches this time. Instead “Unite the Right 2” had to console themselves with generating news coverage wildly out of proportion to their influence and power.

The Washington Post had an incredible 20 pre-rally stories. These breathless accounts were filled with references to last year’s riot in Charlottesville, the sinister implications of “white supremacists”, the malign ideology of “white nationalists” and how Donald Trump – the man who hired Omarosa! – was secretly encouraging a Wonder bread coup. Which reminds me, if Trump is a closet racist, enabling Klan 2.0, he’s doing a lousy job of it. Blacks are currently at their lowest unemployment level in decades and his approval rating among blacks is now 36 percent.

The Post was like reading an issue of Pravda from the 1970’s. The USSR may have lost the Cold War, but it was the overwhelming victor in the propaganda war.

Stories previewing the rally could have been an opportunity to highlight the racial progress our country has made in the last 100 years. But leftist news media only believes in evolution when it undermines the Bible. It’s stasis, baby, as far as white conservatives are concerned. And that’s in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary.

In 1923 the largest Ku Klux Klan rally in history attracted 200,000 who reveled in an orgy of hate. “Unite the Right 2” organizers estimated a maximum of 400 Nazis and bigots would gather in Washington, D.C., an attendance decline of 99.99 percent. And that was before the real head count, which showed about 24 die-hard haters appeared. Positive coverage could have pointed out these losers were protected by black police officers who would have been on the other end of the baton in 1962.

There are more “democratic socialists” holding office in America today than there are “white supremacists.” For an ideology that’s supposed to be so dangerous, these dead-enders have remarkably little impact. Where exactly are these whites supreme?

At the height of Reconstruction, when the South was occupied by Union troops, there were 1,500 black elected officials. In 2011 there were 10,500 black elected officials and the only troops in the South are on military bases local politicians will fight to their last breath to keep.

The U.S. has black police chiefs, black mayors, black members of Congress. Blacks are even playing quarterback in Alabama! Schools are integrated. Public accommodations are integrated. The military is integrated. The only segregation that still exists was the special Metro car that kept the bigots alive as they traveled to and from the rally.

Bigots control no police forces today. No state or local governments, either. Racists have no media support. The culture has turned decisively against them. If it hadn’t, Obama administration appointees would be refused service in restaurants, instead of Trump administration officials.

Oh, yes, and that reminds me: THE U.S. ELECTED A BLACK MAN AS PRESIDENT.

And still the leftist media characterizes the U.S. as a sinkhole of racism. This holier,’than,’thou news media attitude was perfectly characterized by the little clean, thoroughbred, white girl who demanded Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tell her off the top of her head how many blacks worked for the president.

Hyping a non-existent threat from these sad, powerless racists is a false, disingenuous, dangerous narrative that only serves to create discord and empower the violent, fascist left. “Enemies of the people” may not be the right term, but impartial journalists certainly isn’t correct either.

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Copyright 2018 Michael Shannon, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Shannon is a commentator and public relations consultant, and is the author of “A Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times.” He can be reached at [email protected].