05 September 2016 | And the Chumps Played On

Even by the ever-lowering standards of our Media Glitterati, last week's chasing of Donald Trump's quickie meeting with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was nothing short of embarrassing.

First, there were reports that not even the reporters assigned to cover Trump's campaign knew about this visit and allegedly were "seething." A funny word, given that they weren't going to do anything about it, but I suppose that "seething" at hapless Trump officials is a way of looking serious and important. Then it turns out that this quickie meeting wasn't so impromptu after all: it had been planned for some time, stemming from Nieto's invitation to both Trump and Clinton to come visit Mexico for whatever reason that might help his staggeringly low approval rating (at one point, 23 percent.)

But this all backfired on Nieto and on the media. The latter heralded this visit, in the words of slobbering sycophant Chuck Todd as "looking presidential," no doubt feeding the hashtag "HillaryinHiding," as though she was supposed to visit Mexico at this point and decided to back out. These pronouncements were also stoking what kept being billed as a major policy speech on immigration to be held in Phoenix later that evening.

What a joke.

This major speech was nothing more than the same Mexico bashing that we've already seen, with a repeated promise that Mexico will pay for a wall. There was absolutely nothing new here, but the same form we've come to expect from Trump, replete with choppy hand waves, a red face, and yelling. Nieto took to Twitter to say that he had indeed told Trump that Mexico was never going to pay for such a wall, even though Trump said the subject never came up. Then he later said that "now was not the time for discussion" on that issue. So it came up or it didn't. One of them is lying.

Yet does that matter to our gutless media fucks? Of course not. Not only did they look incredibly stupid, but got played for chumps in the process. And did any of them push further into the details about who said precisely what? Did they press Trump campaign officials for why the visit in the first place if the ballyhooed speech was just the same thing we've already heard? Nope, nothing at all.

There is one takeaway from this. (Well there are several, but let's cap it for now at one.) No matter how much Hillary Clinton raises in funds and no matter how much she's already producing ads that are airing, it really doesn't matter. Trump played the Mexican president and then the press for hours of media exposure that didn't cost him a dime.