Give Trump the silent treatment

Years ago, I was a lawyer for the American Jewish Congress, Commission on Law and Social Action in New York City.

I’m reminded now about one case that we handled that involved the Nazi spokesman George Lincoln Rockwell who sought the right to speak at a public park.

Among others, Jewish groups protested. Why allow vile speech in public places, they claimed?

I argued that we only brought attention to his stupid rants by making him a victim who would claim he was denied his First Amendment rights.

{mosads}The same issue arose years later in Skokie, Illinois, when marchers sought permission from city officials, and Jewish groups protested, claiming that their parade insulted holocaust survivors. The ACLU defended the marchers to the outrage of observers who understandably sympathized with the survivors.

The same thing is going on now in Berkeley, California where two outrageous speakers were rebuffed by “liberals” who don’t want them to have a voice, so obnoxious to protesters.

In all these instances, my view is the ACLU view, and a pragmatic one, at that. Only by protesting their rights to speak do we give these provocateurs the larger audience they never would have had if they were simply ignored.

These examples bring me to the point that national media is being fooled by President Trump.

During the debates, while Trump insulted the media, they sat there like props, and gave his insults the very audience he desired. Now, Trump’s outrageous tweets are covered endlessly by media on both sides of the political spectrum.

The media – networks included – haven’t learned their lesson from the election where Trump news sucked the air out of coverage of his competitors, Democratic and Republican. Trump insults the Pope, John McCain, his opponents, and the media itself which covers Trump’s outrages ad nauseum, to the exclusion of reasonable other points of view.

The same phenomenon continues to the present. Trump tweets and the media genuflects. Trump cares nothing about press criticism so long as he gets the coverage. He boasted to Associated Press that his ratings for press coverage is the highest since 9/11! “It’s a tremendous advantage,” he instructed the media he publicly deplores.

Bernie Sanders is now the most popular politician in America, according to, ironically, to a Fox News poll. 

But do you see the media covering his every move? His constructive politicking gets sparse coverage while Trump’s outrages are exhaustively covered, in protest and in admiration, but to the exclusion of his political opponents in his party and the opposition.
 One expects fawning coverage from his admirers at FOX; but Rachel, Wolf, Lawrence, et. al., you are keeping him in the news and that is his power.

Look the other way when he rants to his followers, and like Rockwell, and Coulter and others who media popularized in the past, and they will be left only with their right to speak to their relatively few followers, and are denied the larger audience.

Ronald Goldfarb is a Washington, DC attorney, literary agent and author of 13 books.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.