David Martin
Heresy Central
February 19, 2021

In recent history, the only American president who has garnered anything resembling the bad press that Donald Trump consistently received was Jimmy Carter in the latter stages of his presidency.  Probably not coincidentally, Carter and Trump were both ushered out of the Oval Office after one term.  In the 24 years since George H.W. Bush was top dog for one term, we had three presidents in Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama who were smiled upon by the press.  Their gentle press treatment was exemplified by the conduct of their press conferences. Clinton was the best actor of the three, making it appear that he had chosen the reporter he was calling on spontaneously.  Bush wasn’t nearly as good as faking it, betraying the lack of spontaneity by looking down at his list before calling a reporter’s name.  Obama simply dropped all pretense in the matter, making no effort to conceal the fact that he was choosing the person to be called upon from a list from which he was reading, which indicates pretty strongly that he knew in advance what the question would be, and everything had been planned in advance.

What this symbiotic relationship between these two-term presidents and the press tells us is that they were smiled upon by what has in recent years come to be called the Deep State.  Before this run of two-term presidents we had the one-term George H.W. Bush, who was about as Deep State as it gets, but his departure from office had an almost voluntary feel about it, like the passing of the reins of the company over to a younger partner for expedient reasons.