President Trump’s speech on withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement presented one of those awkward moments when everyone has to wonder whether the news media is willfully obtuse or if it really does lack any sense of national pride.
Speaking from the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, Trump said he was withdrawing from the agreement because it put American workers at an economic disadvantage to the benefit of other countries. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” he said.
For nearly 30 minutes, Trump railed against what he described as “the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States.”
He said that the agreement functioned in a way that’s “less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.”
He called it “a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries” and said that it “handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense.
“They don’t put America first,” Trump said of foreign leaders (otherwise known as U.S. competitors). “I do and I always will.”
For anyone with an ounce of patriotism in their blood, those are the words of someone who believes his country and its people are exceptional and shouldn’t be burdened to the benefit of other nations aspiring for the same.
But the news media, in an unusual departure from its typical cheery outlook, heard only darkness.
MSNBC’s Brian Williams described the scene. “On a sunny day in the Rose Garden, what could be defined and construed as a dark speech,” he said, channeling the spirit of a preteen poet.
He then brought in Nicolle Wallace, a Republican who nonetheless manages day-in and day-out to repeat the same things every other MSNBC host says.
“It was an incredibly cynical look at our role in the world,” she said, later calling it “one of the most bleak depictions of America’s role in the world.”
Fareed Zakaria on CNN said, “I think…this will be the day that the United States resigned as the leader of the free world.”
Where is it written that for the U.S. to lead the world it has to first crush its productive workforce then follow up by giving billions to its competitors?
That Trump had wrecked American “leadership” was a theme stuck on repeat.
A Washington Post editorial said Trump “dealt a blow to the U.S. leadership that has helped promote peace and prosperity for the past seven decades under Republican and Democratic presidents alike. Under their guidance, the United States acted with selflessness and enlightened self-interest.”
It may also be “enlightened” to stop cutting down trees and turning them into near-obsolete newspapers, but presumably the Washington Post wouldn’t be so interested in “selflessness” then.
Back on MSNBC, Donny Deutsche, the nation’s guiding light, attempted to define the appropriate way to lead.
“Even if we are contributing more in many instances than the rest of the world,” he said, “that’s what leaders do.”
No, that’s what nuns do. U.S. presidents look out for U.S. interests.
The Paris deal boiled down to nearly 200 countries setting up their own individual rules to curb carbon emission. That included countries, like India, receiving billions in foreign aid from more developed economies and other countries, like China, doing less to curb emissions and at a slower pace to fulfill their own end of the agreement.
It’s true that there’s no enforcement mechanisms to ensure each country meets its obligation, and Trump repeatedly said he was willing to re-enter the same or a similar deal under different terms for the U.S.
But anytime he asserts the country’s right to put itself first, the media wince as if they just noticed a new text alert from Anthony Weiner.
At his speech accepting the Republican nomination, Trump said, “As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.”
The New York Times summed up the speech with the headline, “His Tone Dark, Donald Trump Takes G.O.P. Mantle.”
In his inaugural address, Trump appealed to voters who feel alienated by the establishment. “Their victories have not been your victories; and their triumphs have not been your triumphs,” he said. “And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.”
Outside of Washington, that’s like coming up for air.
The New York Times called it an “angry jeremiad.”
Washington news outlets and political commentators push a view that says Trump’s “America First” theme is “dark” and “cynical.”
But readers and viewers are always left asking: For who?
Eddie Scarry is a media reporter for the Washington Examiner.
