OTM #2

The Ties that Bind

Bob Garfield started off this podcast with a large attention getter, and news I hadn't even heard about. That we the United States were not at war with Australia. . . yet. Immediately I was alarmed, what did Garfield mean war? What did our half-a-brain president do now? And why wasn't this circulating the mainstream media as much as the Celebrity Apprentice ratings were. 

So I looked it up.

According to Vox news and The Washington Post , Trump had called the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull on January 28th, 2017 and wanted to discuss the pre-existing agreement made with former President Barack Obama. In this former agreement, Obama had agreed to take in 1,250 refugee's that were in detention centers just outside Australia. As we all know how much our current President Trump hates taking in refugees (*cough Muslim ban cough*) its obvious what Trump wanted to discuss.  He didn't want to take in the refugee's. When Prime Minister Turnbull wouldn't change the agreement, Trump abruptly ended the call (after insulting Turnbull and boasting himself) at 25 minutes, which was suppose to be an hour long phone call. 

The aftermath was what we can expect from Trump, a mean tweet on twitter saying, "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!" as well as accused Australia of exporting the "next Boston bombers".

However that is not the only topic that grabbed at my attention. Garfield also brought up the fact that Trump did threaten to invade Mexico "if they don't take care of 'bad hombres'". I delved deeper into this topic and found he was referencing the drug crimes in Mexico. According to the Washington Post , a spokesperson from Mexico said, "It's absolutely false that the United States President threatened to send troops to Mexico". Later clarifying that Trump was speaking in jest and that the Mexican President knew it (thank god!). 

These are both stories that I hadn't even heard about in the news circles I follow. Perhaps I just hadn't been paying attention when those headlines were being talked about, or perhaps they were buried under the unimportant new. This is something I had been thinking of when Garfield was reporting on those stories, which eventually became a concern of Garfield's too.  

With all this leaked news from insiders of the White House, I'm excited to know we are seeing what our President is truly up to. However, I feel that the reporters are focusing too much on the dumb things our President is known to say and they aren't paying enough attention to the dumb things our President is actually doing. And its not just the reporters doing this. I see people on Facebook re-posting dumb things our President has said recently or in the past and though I do find it entertaining, its not what we should be focusing on as a society. We need to stay up to date on what is happening in that White House so that we the people can have a say in what happens and be prepared for the inevitable.