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When “Fake News” Suddenly Becomes Your Best Friend

Trump’s inconsistent take on what is “fake news” should raise a red flag for us all, writes Will Witt, Editor in Chief of The Florida Standard.

TAMPA, FLORIDA - Throughout the past six or seven years, since Donald Trump first announced his run for the presidency in the 2016 election, the mainstream media has been enemy number one of Republicans all across the nation.

Donald Trump refused to take questions from them and their cronies, yelling out “fake news!” and “no!” as he only engaged with journalists that he actually believed in.

But this seems to all have changed in a matter of weeks.

In a recent email from the Trump press team, they highlight a slew of negative media coverage of the Florida governor related to his recent international trade mission. There are headlines from left-wing sources like Politico, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, NBC and Mediaite making up the list – organizations that have been lambasted by conservatives in recent years as nothing more than propaganda and slander.

One of the few conservative sites listed was Breitbart, who just had leaked messages reveal that a top pro-Trump editor was trying to censor anything that painted Ron DeSantis in a positive light.

So, the question is: Since when did conservatives care about what the mainstream media said about them? I thought these sources were “fake news” – and as Trump said in 2019 – “the enemy of the people.”

It seems this embracing of mainstream media and big corporations is a new strategy for the Trump team, with him going on a CNN town hall, his son trying to protect Anheuser Busch from boycotts, and the latest talking point for the Trump marketing and influencer machine against DeSantis being the sharing of these left-wing headlines.

This all seems to paint a clear picture: The populist, anti-elitist conservative uprising of 2016 is dead, and we have now gone into a full-on embrace of the enemies who have been slandering us and telling lies about us for years.

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