The other day I was talking with a guy who said that because he loved hockey he had put in almost 30 years as a referee for youth and adult amateur hockey games. But he gave it up recently, he said, because he couldn’t take the abuse: the people, especially parents, who would attack him verbally, even threaten him physically, because they didn’t like his calls. He hates to be away from the game, he said, but it’s just not the same anymore when people care more about winning at any cost than playing the game by the rules.
And then Donald Trump came to mind. You can’t get away from the guy, you know – like, he’s even inserting himself into the recipe for Coca-Cola and the water flow from shower heads. So the experience of the former hockey referee suddenly reminded me of how Trump reacts to facts that he doesn’t like.
The latest example, of course, is what the president did when the government issued a slightly disappointing jobs report: only 73,000 new jobs were created in July, according to numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is about a third of what Trump might have hoped; and the BLS also revised downward the job creation numbers for the prior two months by about 200,000 jobs. These numbers suggest that the economy is not booming, contrary to what Trump wishes and claims. But rather than accept the tough news and take steps to make things better, he declared (with absolutely no evidence) that the figures were fraudulent – and he then fired the Commissioner of Labor Statistics. (1:25)
This is typical Trump: If information isn’t favorable to him, he insists it is “fake news” or “a hoax” and, if he can, he fires the bearer of bad tidings. Good thing he never played baseball – he would surely have been ejected from the game for arguing every strike call.
But batters can’t fire umpires and scorekeepers. And they don’t have compliant sportscasters praising their sharp vision that proves the balls and strikes are just as they call ’em. That’s the role Fox News plays for Donald Trump, you know: “Oh, you’re so smart, sir!” And ball players also can’t impose fines on anybody they think is stopping them from cheating, or interfering with their march to Cooperstown.
Trump has always been a magnificent liar, but he seems especially and unabashedly unbolted from reality these days.
He claimed in a press conference recently that after he won the presidency in 2016, President Obama was conspiring with Hillary Clinton to “lead a coup,” in his words. Not true, of course. He said that Democrats paid Beyoncé $11 million to endorse Kamala Harris. Not true. He said that the federal government’s investigative files on the sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein were, in his words, “made up” by Obama and Biden. Not true. He has claimed that new foreign investments in America since his term began six months ago total $10 trillion. Not true.
So, you’ve got to wonder: What will Trump do if next month’s employment figures are bad again, or even worse? Will he order the Bureau of Labor Statistics to change them? Fire the acting administrator? You have to wonder who will trust the statistics going forward, knowing that Trump wants them manipulated to make him look good. It’s the same with declarations now from the Food and Drug Administration or the Department of Justice or the CIA or the FBI: You have to take whatever they say with a grain of salt, because you know that Trump has made it clear that everybody has to echo his viewpoint, if they can figure it out, or they risk being fired.
Here's the thing: We need truth-tellers in government. We need umpires who will call the balls and strikes fairly, and we need scorekeepers. And if we can’t find them in government, which seems to be the case these days, we need impartial, honest observers outside – which is where the press comes in.
Now, Trump attacks the independent media because it’s beyond his control. All those Trump lies I just mentioned were caught and reported by journalists. And that’s why Trump calls reporters “enemies of the people.” He didn’t take away funding from public media to save taxpayer dollars – it was approximately one one-hundredth of a percent of the federal budget. The Voice of America and other parts of the U.S. Agency for Global Media spent 13 one-hundredths of one percent of the budget, and he killed that. Why? He did both of those things because accurate reporting, and free speech, threaten his dominance.
That kind of interference with truth-telling is intolerable in a democracy. But it is happening every day now. The public officials who pretend this isn’t happening – the politicians who stand with Trump instead of with the truth – are ruining the freedom that Americans have long cherished.
That’s why it’s important for Americans to stand up for public media, and for the independent press that still insists on truth-telling. My friend the ex-hockey referee would understand. Somebody needs to catch the players who don’t go by the rules. We call them reporters and editors and producers, but they’re now America’s umpires and referees and scorekeepers. And we need them – because they’re now just about all that keeps the game of democracy from being entirely run by the cheaters.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
