Trump's domination of the news

Is there ever a day when Donald Trump is not dominating the news? Jim Geraghty at National Review writes about a statement Trump made yesterday. I had missed Trump's remarks about closing off the internet to Muslims.

...last night Donald Trump talked about “closing the Internet in some way,” explicitly dismissing concerns about freedom of speech.

“We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet. And we have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”

Trumpies, your man has no idea what he is talking about. Bill Gates does not “really understand what’s happening,” Microsoft does not control the Internet, we do not need the U.S. government to be ‘closing that Internet up in some way’ and it is not foolish to be concerned about freedom of speech.

Read more here.

Jonah Goldberg also writes at The Corner about Trump's domination of the news.

Donald Trump has everyone’s number. Whenever he’s in trouble — when he’s caught making an outrageous comment, or revealing the depth of his ignorance, or when he says something untrue, or simply when the polls aren’t to his liking — he says something that gets the Mainstream Media to get its collective dress over its head. Trump’s supporters all rush to his defense, eager for a fresh fight.

...What happens? Everyone – and I do mean everyone — takes the bait. We’re doing it here at NRO — we have several items up on the topic right now, and no doubt more to come. That giant sucking sound you hear isn’t the supposedly job-sucking economy of Mexico, but Donald Trump hoovering up all of the media oxygen. Legal scholars weigh in on the constitutionality of it. Debates over the nature of fascism sprout up like mushrooms after a rainstorm. It is an entirely unserious proposal taken seriously by just about everyone, including the people who condemn it.

The media loves it for all the obvious reasons, including good ratings and the more comfortable storyline than Barack Obama’s myriad failures. Hillary Clinton loves it because it harms the serious GOP candidates, sows discord in the ranks of the Republicans, and supports her unfolding argument that the GOP is a vessel of warmongering, bigotry, and silliness. ISIS loves it (in this case) for remarkably similar reasons because it bolsters their efforts to say that the West is bigoted towards Muslims. Trump supporters love it because they’ve somehow convinced themselves that attacks on Trump prove he’s right. I would love for Trump to come out and declare 2+2 equals 17 just to see who gets booked on cable news to defend the proposition.

I have no solution for the problem. If conservatives and Republicans ignore it, the media and the Democrats will insist that silence equals agreement. If we join in the frenzy we only make the frenzy greater and give Trump exactly what he wants: all of the limelight. It’s all so transparent and pathetic. But it is also simply where we are.

Read more here.