Image credit: STILLFX.
The NRA is all fired up by Donny’s sucking up. They really didn’t expect the Tiny Tyrant to win, and hadn’t planned on having a new target, as they were completely focused on Clinton. They’ve had to do a bit of scrambling to identify a new enemy, and as the Tiny Tyrant is doing such a good job of shoving his head up the NRA arse, they’re supporting him in the ‘enemy’ department.
But with President Trump’s win — unexpected even for many here at the NRA’s annual meeting — the group had to reorient itself around a new target able to drive just as much anger in its millions of members.
ISIS or other international threats may have been easy marks. But judging by the rhetoric used by NRA leaders and President Trump in Atlanta this week, the gun lobby has set its sights elsewhere: the media.
“It’s up to us to speak up against the three most dangerous voices in America: academic elites, political elites, and media elites. These are America’s greatest domestic threats” LaPierre told thousands of NRA members on Friday at the group’s Leadership Forum, explaining that the media is trying to destroy Trump and his administration.
When do we get to talk about dangerously obsessed gun fondler elites? I’d like to have that discussion.
“Leftists media elites deliberately deceive and spin and twist the truth to grow their anti-American agenda,” he said. Later he asked: “When did the media stop being journalists and start becoming PR flacks for the destruction of our country?”
Taking it a step further, LaPierre told his members that the job of the NRA is to give “the media the big fat black eye it so often richly deserves.” Dana Loesch, a conservative media personality and NRA spokesperson, later used similarly incendiary language in a video segment, saying gun owners need to “fight this violence of lies with a clenched fist of truth.” And Chris Cox, the group’s chief lobbyist, claimed that the media “drew their knives from the very beginning” and led a “vicious” attack against Trump.
The line drew huge applause from the audience, and a mention of CNN later in the event led NRA members to take to their feet chanting “CNN sucks.”
Oh great, the aging white dudes think they are playing war. Did they not get the memo that guns are passé? Donny has nukes!
The NRA spent more than $30 million last year to elect Trump — more than three times the amount it spent on Mitt Romney’s campaign — and the investment paid off. Speaking on Friday as the first sitting president to address the NRA in over three decades, Trump confirmed his commitment to upholding the group’s agenda.
When it comes to attacking the press, the NRA appears ready to do Trump’s bidding. And its members are ready to fall in line.
[…]
With similar thinking coming from the Trump administration in Washington, that kind of language could translate into policy when it comes to freedom of the press. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told ABC News Sunday that the president is open to considering changing the constitution so that he could sue journalists for unfavorable coverage.
Well, didn’t take the Tiny Tyrant long to focus on the merits of fascism once again. Speaking of, the Tiny Tyrant is all a gush over his new bestest buddy ever, Rodrigo Duterte. Donny really, truly admires Duterte’s war on drugs. Yeah, we’re very fucked here.
Full stories at Think Progress: NRA, Duterte, Suing Journalists.
It’s so hard for me to fit “didn’t think Trump would win” with “gave Trump’s campaign $30mm” -- but it just shows the pervasiveness of influence-buying in American “democracy”: it’s an investment in future favors. The system and Trump mutually corrupted.
At that time, the NRA was still focused on spreading lies about Clinton all over the place, and whipping up frenzy among the gun fondlers that she was gonna take their guns away, which showed they really did think she would win.
Of course absolutely nobody in his audience sees an issue with the head of 145 year old political organization with a quarter billion budget and half of congress in his pocket attacking ‘political elites’.
Because we know that ‘elites’ is just a paper-thin stand in for the people they actually wanna crush.
But remember, free speech. Totally no connection between the NRA openly advocating violence against certain groups and gun toting “patriots” killing people.
If the NRA prefers having an enemy like Clinton, why’d they support Trump to begin with? Regardless of how likely she’d win? Just to demonize Clinton as candidate and inspire more gun sales for 2016?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the gun above is in fact not photoshopped but an acutal image of a product on sale somewhere. The sort of thing that ships with engraved bullets along the lines of ‘Liberty’ and ‘Freedom’.
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Giliell, you’re forgetting that when someone gets hurt those same patriots miraculously transform into mentally disturbed lone wolf irresponsible gun owners the NRA had nothing to do with. Therefore there really is no connection.
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Lumipuna, nobody complains about serendipity. Given the option between shifting target or actually having to deal with someone in power who might be hostile to your agenda -- which I don’t believe for a second -- the former is still easier. And it’s not like the NRA could have spent the election sitting idle. Their members probably expecteded the NRA to support the republicans, so they did. Any organisation that can spend 30M$ on warm attitudes is not going to be too upset if they took the wrong bet.
Quite different from what the job of the NRA used to be: education about firearms and gun safety. They don’t give a shit about either of those now. All they want to do is get more people to buy more guns.
The NRA always was an industry trade group. Their purpose really is to increase gun sales. At one time that meant promoting safety to prevent bad press. For many years now it’s just lying to scare everyone into buying more guns. Apparently that was much more effective.
Not sure how someone could work for such an organization and still sleep at night.