Sunday School 10/4/20

I don't have a clue where to start my classroom stroll today, so I'm doing it the old fashioned way: drawing names out of a hat.  And the winners are: This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and  CNN's State of the Union, with Jake Tapper.  Which means I get to skip Chuck Todd, which is good, and I get to skip Nancy Pelosi, which is also good. 

After a news brief from a handful of correspondents, George started out with Jason Miller, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign and an all-around good guy, it would seem - and yes, that's sarcasm.

Miller's one of the folks who has tested negative, so far, but he had some very upbeat news from the president:

Number one, that we're going to defeat this virus. President Trump personally is going to defeat it. As a nation, we're going to defeat it and get life back to normal. Get this vaccine. 

But then also our campaign is going to defeat it. And I think when President Trump gets out of the White House, or -- excuse me, out of the -- gets back to the White House and back on the campaign trail, it's going to be a slingshot taking us forward.

But he said something that was important, George, and that’s to be careful. To make sure that folks are washing hands, to make sure using hand sanitizer, to make sure they're wearing a mask if you can't socially distance. These are all important things and reminders that President Trump told us.

Those are all important reminders from the president, who doesn't follow any of his own advice.  George noted  a new poll showing that 72% of Americans "say the president didn't take the risk of getting COVID seriously enough and didn't take appropriate precaution when it came to his own personal health." 

Miller's response? It's pretty funny, actually. He said Trump made sure we stopped the foreign travelers from China and Europe, shut down the country for two weeks and a month, "had to go and keep us safe," and that flattened the curve, helped us develop therapeutics, then the vaccines being developed and 100,000 ventilators, and you know what else? NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE QUESTION!

Oh, wait, sorry. Let me address the question, which George helped him do by giving some concrete examples: 

... the president had to take it head-on, but he didn't have to have -- hold rallies where people did not social distance, where did not wear masks. He didn't have to mock former Vice President Joe Biden for wearing a mask and reporters who wore masks. He didn't have to continue to go to event after event without wearing a mask.

Again, we have an epic fail from Miller: the president is one of the most tested people in the country...  anyone spending time with him is tested before hand, they keep their distance - 

 -- the closest I ever get to the president is about eight feet, maybe six feet, usually a pretty solid distance back. A lot of times it's more like ten feet. 

And people wash their hands and use sanitizer and drink bleach.. (sorry, he didn't really say that, and on and on and on about not answering the question. And I'm done with Mr. Miller, I'm not even going to watch the rest of his segment. 

The round table gang was all there, except for Chris Christie, who tested positive after hanging out maskless doing debate prep with the president, and was in the hospital due to his pre-existing asthma. 

In contrast to Miller, Matthew Dowd (chief political analyst for ABC) said 

first thing is I hope we can simultaneously do two things, which is send compassion and concern for the first lady and the president, and be so angry about the cavalier attitude and the cavalier way and the irresponsibility of this president and the White House... 

Which means, basically, he's mad as hell and doesn't want to take it any more. For her part, Republican strategist Alice Stewart said that this whole thing does put pressure - "tremendous pressure" - on Republicans up and down the ballot.

Look, the president's base will support him. Biden's base will support him. But these undecided voters, they do have concerns about how this has been handled. And leadership is about not just showing that you're in control but actually being in control. And to be in control, you have to lead by example and heed the advice of these public health officials and also talk the talk and walk the walk. And there's great concern whether or not this president has done so.

Rahm Emmanuel, former Obama chief of staff, talked about what George called "a case study for how not to bring important information to the public."

I will say that what they did there on the White House was everything you're not supposed to do. And it continues to undermine the president's campaign, because it was a lack of information on a very, very important issue. And what they needed to do from the get-go was hit the restart and say, 'here's how we're going to be honest, here's how we're going to lead by example.'

And he said, "the edifice of what Trump is to the public" is starting to come apart.

And I think the White House, in this set of decisions, has actually shown a disjointed -- you got a medical team that saying he's OK, yet all the care he's getting shows he's a very sick patient. And that dissonance, that kind of information that's jarring, is actually undermining the presidency and his candidacy right now.

Which is just one more "thing that makes you go hmm... " 

Down the hall in the CNN classroom, Jake Tapper noted the confusing information on Trump's condition, with Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, contradicting Sean Conley, the president's doctor. And, Tapper said,

Right now, it is of the utmost importance for the White House to provide you, the American people, with information, accurate information, factual information, about the president's condition.

We asked the White House for someone to be here to do just that today. We asked for the vice president or the chief of staff or the communications director or the president's physician. We asked for members of the Coronavirus Task Force, including health Secretary Azar, Dr. Fauci, or Dr. Birx, or the surgeon general, or the director of the NIH, or the CDC director, or the top vaccine adviser, or Jared Kushner, or the national security adviser.

The White House declined to provide any of them, any of them, to update you on the president's condition. Instead, they referred us to the president's political campaign. We told them we would be happy to take the campaign manager.

But, unfortunately, he, too, is now battling the coronavirus.

Some folks on social media thought that those comments meant that Tapper was picking on the White House. In fact, he was picking on their apparent inability to speak the truth. Not the same, usually, but with this administration, I guess it is. 

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was one of the guests. He said there had been no contact from the White House on the potential exposure to anyone who had attended the debate in his state,. And he doesn't know if the White House had reached out to the Cleveland Clinic folks, either - they're the medical consultants for the debates.  That said, DeWine didn't seem too upset about the president, his family and his team perhaps putting Ohioans at risk.

Well, I think it's important what the president has done. The president went to the hospital. That will -- could not have been an easy thing for him to do. I'm sure he didn't want to go the hospital. He made the right decision. They put up two videos of the president talking to the people of this country. I think that is very positive.

And I think, look, this is -- what I said at a press conference I did the other day, this is -- should be kind of an alert to everybody that anybody can get the virus. Even the president of the United States can get the virus. And so we ought to use this, and simply just learn from it. And so people who -- maybe who have not worn masks in the past, I'm hoping that they will look at this and say, look, the president can get it, I can get it, it can happen to anybody.

And I hope that that's what happens and that's what comes out of this.

He's quite the tap-dancer, the Governor is. Or, he's physically incapable of saying anything bad about Trump, I'm not sure which. Oh wait - my bad - it's something else entirely. Tapper flat out said to him, "I just don't understand the reluctance to state the obvious, which is, President Trump has been mocking people who wear masks. And now there are a lot of Republicans who won't wear masks.

DeWine's answer?

Look, do I wish -- look, do I wish the president had worn masks all the time? Of course. Of course. When people go vote, there's a lot -- there's other things besides that. I think the president has done a very good job, as I just detailed, in trying to get us the things that we need, the testing that we need... and the PPE that we need. And that doesn't, frankly, a lot of times get reported. And they have done a very good job.

And if I don't keep saying stuff like that, he left unsaid, I won't get the stuff I need. And so in that regard, it's not October, it's March. And April. And May. And June... when all the governors were having to suck up to the president, or Jared, or Pence, in order to get the things they needed. 

That's all for now. I'll have more for you in tomorrow's Extra Credit. And, as Chris Wallace said so eloquently, wear your damn mask.

Sidebar: "Let's Call It Trumpvirus"

In our Sunday School Extra Credit post this week, Chuck Todd asked Mike Pence about some comments being made by people on the right tabout people on the left trying trying to weaponize and politicize the coronavirus against the president.  

Here's a comment from Junior that Todd used, along with one from Rush Limbaugh and Ronna McDaniel, to spur some conversation.

For them to try to take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people so that they could end Donald Trump's streak of winning is a new level of sickness.

We'll leave Junior's particular level of sickness out of the picture, and focus on what Pence said, after Todd pressed him to name names. 

CT: Because this is just -- it just feels like gas-lighting. Please name some names. I’m -- we're all big -- we're all big people here. Name some names.

VP: There was a column in the New York Times by a prominent liberal journalist that said, "We should rename it the Trump virus." --

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/

AFP via Getty Images

That was done, the veep said, "so that the president would be blamed." 

So, what did the piece, with the headline "Let's Call it Trumpvirus," say? Let's take a look at what columnist Gail Collins, former editor of the Times' Op-Ed page, wrote.

On appointing Mike Pence to be head of the coronavirus task force: 

So, our Coronavirus Czar is going to be … Mike Pence. Feeling more secure? “I know full well the importance of presidential leadership,” the vice president said as soon as he was introduced in his new role. Totally qualified. First criterion for every job in this administration is capacity for praising the gloriousness of our commander in chief... 

In contrast, here's what the president had to say about appointing a similarly unqualified person to lead a pandemic effort. 

Rightfully so, he was not the only one to criticize the Obama appointment, just as many others besides Collins have criticized his own appointment of his groveling veep to this critical role. 

On our stock market's roller-coaster, which came on the heels of similar thrill rides in every global market, the president downplayed the impact of a potential pandemic, and instead pointed to his Democratic opponents. 

“I think the financial markets are very upset when they look at the Democrat candidates standing on that stage making fools out of themselves,” Trump told reporters. Plus, that virus thing is … not necessarily a big deal. What really “shocked” him, Trump said, was his discovery that “the flu in our country kills 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year.”

So the problems are the Democrats and the flu...

But it's OK, because everything's going to be great, and we'll keep #winning, just like junior said.

The president had been saying everything is totally under control for some time. (“It’s one person coming in from China.”) The whole administration picked up the cry. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, 82, overcame his habit of dozing off at meetings long enough to tell Fox Business Network that the disease would “accelerate the return of jobs” from overseas.

Trump totally agrees. “What it’s gonna do is keep people home, and they’re going to travel to places we have,” he said. See? The virus thing is a bonus.

The article also talks about the elimination of the epidemic-watching groups that were in place during the previous administration.

 One was headed by the highly regarded Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, who got sent packing by John Bolton. Another infectious disease expert, Tom Bossert, suddenly vanished from the Department of Homeland Security in 2018, presumably also at the hand of John You-know-who.

If Bolton’s memoir ever makes it into print, do you think it’ll have a chapter called “My War on Pandemic Fighters?” OK, probably not.

And, it talks about a couple of what Trump surely would have called SAD! performances, had these folks been in someone else's administration. First, there was this:

The nation got its first real look at Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, who appeared before a Senate subcommittee and admitted he had no idea how the virus was transmitted among humans, exactly how dangerous it was, or … pretty much anything. 

When Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican not known for anti-administration bias, asked whether the country had enough respirators to deal with a coronavirus epidemic, Wolf answered in the affirmative.  

“We just heard testimony that we don’t,” Kennedy responded. “OK,” said Wolf. 

To be fair, he’s only been on the job since November. He’s the fifth head of Homeland Security Trump’s had in the last three years. Good thing he has a deputy — or at least an acting deputy — to help. That would be Ken Cuccinelli, who made news this week when he went on Twitter to ask for tips on how to find an online map of coronavirus sites posted by Johns Hopkins University. (“Here’s hoping it goes back up soon.”) 

And then, there was this, in reference to HHS Secretary Alex Azar, also part of the P-Team.

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, Azar was asked if he’d consider using some of the billions of dollars in funds for Trump’s border wall to help combat the current health crisis. Azar just chuckled.

Actually, people, this is probably not a theme we ought to be pursuing. Chances are, if the president is encouraged to mix the subjects of coronavirus and Mexico walls, he’ll suddenly announce that we need a barrier much bigger and thicker and more expensive, so it can stop the flow of immigrant germs.

And on that last part, let's go again to that same Extra Credit post, which included a Chris Wallace/Azar interview, in which the subject of Mexico came up.

Wallace asked whether there was any serious consideration to close the US/Mexican border.

Well, right now Mexico has very few cases. So that would -- that would take a real change in the epidemiological profile and the risk to the US from there.  I think (the president) is trying to say is, all things are on the table. We're not going to take anything off the table in our armamentarium of tools we have to protect the American people. 

Regular readers know my profound distaste for the president and most of the people in his administration, but this opinion piece is not untruthful; it references real occurrences and real comments from real members of the administration. Sure, it adds a bit of sarcasm, but that does not make it incorrect, nor does it politicize the virus. It certainly doesn't demonstrate a "new level of sickness" - Donny Jr can hold that title all by himself. Nor does it justify the veep's closing thoughts from his MTP interview.

VP: And when you see voices on our side pushing back on outrageous and irresponsible rhetoric on the other side, I think that's important.

CT: Do you think this rhetoric from your side helps?

VP: I, I never begrudge people responding to unwarranted, unjustified attacks. 

All I can say it that it's even more abundantly clear why the GOP can't do anything about gun safety legislation. It's not the NRA's fault - it's that these goofballs think that the truth is a weapon being used against them. 

Sunday School Extra Credit 12/29/19

In our final Sunday School Extra Credit of the year, I sat in on what could be the one of the most un-self-aware moments of 2019, Meet the Press and "National Menace" Chuck Todd (hear that reference at around 23:30 of this video) looking at "the assault on truth" and "our post-truth society, and how a changing media landscape has created chaos out of order."

The opening of the show include Kellyanne Conway ("alternative facts"), Rudy Giuliani ("truth isn't truth"), Donald Trump ("what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening") -- and Bill Clinton ("it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is").

That's right: he brings in a two-decades old example, suggesting equivalency between what's happening today, every single day, and Bill Clinton answering a question on whether he is or is not still not having "sexual relations with that woman" while fighting for his presidency. I'm not pretending Clinton wasn't a liar - of course he was - but if the point of the show is to delve into our "post-truth society," is Todd really trying to sell us on this being a two-decades-old problem? And if yes, where the hell has he been for the past 20 years? 

Anyway. The first segment begins with fake news being pumped out by Russia, not, he said, to influence the Trump/Clinton race, but to make money on Facebook. And, he continued, the idea of "fake news" has become a growth industry, morphing into "a political weapon in our nationalized politics." 

After giving some pretty well known examples, including the lies about the inaugural crowd, the 15,413 false or misleading Trump statements; the administration's campaign against the press, and social media disinformation. Todd also quoted UK author/tech expert Ben Nimmo on the "four things that disinformation actors" do: Dismiss, Distort, Distract (this includes whataboutism, which is Todd's interview stock-in-trade) and Dismay.

So, let's hear from the print media experts - Martin Baron (exec editor of the WaPo) and Dean Baquet (exec editor of the NYT) on this. Baron noted our current environment is one where conspiracy theories and lies are spread regularly, and how people tend to pay attention to 'news' sources that "confirms their pre-existing points of view..." but that

...(journalists) still have the responsibility for determining what's true and what's false and, in particular, holding our government officials accountable for what they say and telling people they're telling the truth, or they're not telling the truth. That's fundamental to the responsibilities that we have as a journalistic institution.

Todd shared data from a CBS poll showing that 91% of Trump supporters said he, Trump, is where they go for accurate information, and wondered how that challenges the papers. Baron said that's how Trump likes it, saying

(Trump) wants to disqualify the mainstream media as an arbiter of facts and of truth... And he wants to disqualify the courts. He wants to disqualify historians. He wants to disqualify scientists, any independent source of information.

Todd wondered if they need to "market the truth" and "start campaigning, around the country" to explain how facts work. Here's Baquet on that.

What I think we're going to have to get very aggressive at is to be really transparent, to assume nothing, and to make sure people know where we are, how we do our work, to show our work more aggressively. That's a different muscle for us.... To my mind, that's a form of marketing our journalism... as well as what we're doing now...for Marty and I and others to be out in the world, talking about what we do and very aggressively defending our institutions, defending the truth and defending our important role in democracy. 

They also talked about whether voters want to be lied to, something that the MTP executive producer apparently says often, according to Todd, and there was some disagreement on that. Baquet noted

I'm not convinced that people want to be lied to. I think people want to be comforted. And I think politicians sometimes say comforting things to them, and our job is to jump into the breach and jump into those conversations, to do the deep reporting, to say "look, I'm sorry. What I have to say may be uncomfortable. But that think you just heard that made you feel good is a lie." And I think that's our job. 

Todd brought up an example, saying  "Coal jobs is what comes into my head. "Oh, we're going to bring coal jobs back." And you're like, "That's not going to happen," right, Marty?" Baron was more circumspect than Todd ever is.

I think we have to be careful. I don't want to be dismissive of people who support the president. I think they're owed our respect, and they certainly have mine. But you know, they've, they feel the so-called elites in Washington have not paid attention to them, that they don't understand their lives... their concerns... and that they're not being heard. And they feel that the president is actually listening to them and addressing their concerns and so they tend to believe him. And they're deeply suspicious of so-called elites, like us, at least people who are described as elites. 

Baquet said he struggles with being considered one of the elite, having grown up poor in New Orleans, but that "we have to do a much better job."

I agree with what Marty said, understanding some of the forces that drive people in parts of American that maybe are not as powerful in New York or Los Angeles. We have to do a better job covering religion. We have to do a better job understanding why some people support Donald Trump... we cannot dismiss everybody who supported Donald Trump... First off, that's not journalistically moral. It's journalistically moral to reach out, understand the world, and be read. That's our job.

They moved on to a discussion of how to describe journalism at mainstream news organizations, with "fair" or "objective" or "balanced" as possibly appropriate. Baron mentioned fairness, open-mindedness, being listeners more than talkers, and being fair to the public.

We can’t -- you know, we need to be direct and straightforward and tell people what we've actually learned. And so I believe in being fair in the sense of being open-minded, going into a story, but being fair with the public at the end, once we've done our jobs, telling them what we've found.

Todd offered his own thoughts, first saying

The phrase I like to use these days is simply -- Go ahead.

Baquet added a couple more descriptors.

I was going to add my two. I agree with all those, of course. But empathetic, I think great journalists are empathetic, which means they listen, and they try to understand. That's not pandering. And then, I think the most powerful word, for me, is independent -  independent, which means independent of everybody, by the way, except, except our principles and our readers.

And here's where they left this segment, with a second thought from Todd ('Go ahead' not being simply enough, apparently).

All, all good words, there. I use a phrase these days, around here -- “Don't round the edges. Simply, say what you see.” 

There were other segments in the show, as well as the roundtable discussion. I'll pull together a highlight reel of anything noteworthy, and I'll also share some thoughts on this, because while I think it's good to talk about this kind of thing, there were many things left unsaid.

See you around campus. 

The Truth is Out There

The title of this post, of course, comes from the X-Files. It's also been commonly referenced when describing White House press briefings with Sarah Sanders at the podium, as it was in this Forbes article.

"The truth is out there."  That's the tagline of the new TV show The X-Files, and it's a good thing the show is coming back in 2018, because its premise couldn't be more timely.

The latest example of this timely premise came about after the president retweeted the anti-Muslim videos which had been shared by a far-right group in Britain. Sanders maintained that anyone questioning the tweets was barking up the wrong tree. Here's an example:

She reiterated that again today, in her press briefing, as many times as she could, and with only limited success.

Q: ...I want to ask about the videos that the president tweeted yesterday. Firstly, does the president feel that he has an obligation to ensure that the information that he shares on his Twitter feed to millions of people is accurate?

A. I think the president feels that bringing up important issues of our time, like extreme violence and terrorism, are important to do. That was what he was doing in that process, and I think he's going to continue to do that in a number of venues whether it's through speeches, whether it's through Twitter or other social media platforms. 

That went well, don't you think? Here's part two.

Q: But does he understand, though, that sharing those videos might incite violence against Muslims? And does he understand that he's elevated a fringe political group that many people outside of Britain didn't even know about until he tweeted?

A:  Look, I think what he's done is elevate the conversation to talk about a real issue and a real threat, and that's extreme violence and extreme terrorism, something that we know to be very real and something the president feels strongly about talking about, and bringing up and making sure is an issue every single day, that we're looking at the best ways to protect Americans. 

Whoa. He's going to be spreading lies and hate every single day, officially?  Someone tell Twitter and Facebook, so his accounts can be suspended!

And not for nothing, but this particular conversation has not been 'elevated' because no one's talking about terrorism as result of the president's tweets. They're talking about how embarrassing it was, to America and to our allies; they're talking about the fact that one of the videos was a fake and the other two were unverified; they're talking about how none of them happened in Britain, and not in the US, for that matter.

And people are talking about the reaction from Prime Minister Theresa May and others, including this one.

And from someone else named Theresa May Scrivener who was tagged (instead of the Prime Minister) in that follow up tweet. And how that tweet, which said that "we're doing fine" is the total opposite what he's been telling us all along, ever since his 'total ban on Muslims' speech.

Sanders kept going, though, after giving us the 'elevate the conversation' line, with a straight face, no less. And she contradicted the "We're doing just fine!" remark in her response.

Q: On that point, Sarah, did the president, when he retweeted Jayda Fransen, know who she was?

A:  No, I don't believe so. But again, I think he knew that what the issues are, and that is that we have a real threat of extreme violence and terrorism, not just in this country, but across the globe, particularly in Europe. And that was the point he was making and I don't really have very much to add beyond that. 

He didn't even know who he was retweeting? And it didn't occur to him to look at the woman's profile?

Well, actually, tonight you can't do that - her account has been suspended, but several people have posted a tweet Fransen supposedly sent which claimed that WWE wrestlers were Islamic hate preachers.

I'm not posting it because I can't verify it was one she really sent - I guess that's just one more thing that differentiates me from the president.

Back to the Forbes article, which notes three things about the truth:

1. There is such a thing as truth.
2. Evidence is how we discover the truth.
3. Truth is the basis of both democracy and capitalism.

After explaining those three things, it goes on:

The president uses a misleading, mislabeled video as evidence that Islam poses a grave threat to the United State, and his press secretary backs him up. The real threat to our democracy isn't a religion and its millions of followers but the Trump administration's abuse of power and utter contempt for the truth. 

Now, that is something we should "be making sure is an issue, every single day."

Dictionary Definitions

Alternative facts, we're told by Sean Spicer, are not lies. They're like two different weather forecasts.

The press was trying to make that seem like we were ignoring the facts. You can look at a weather report and one weather report comes out and says it's going to be cloudy, and the next one says there's going to be light rain. No one lied to you, it just means you interpreted the data in a way that you felt got you to a conclusion.

 Uh, Sean, is it warmer in the summer than it is in Virginia?

The Trump Administration, apparently not understanding the difference between facts and conclusions, might want to spend some time with Merriam-Webster, the dictionary with a great sense of timing, and humor.

You see, the MW has been helping people with the definitions of words like fact (shown below) and other trending searches, using its Twitter feed to educate people as Spicer, Conway, other surrogates and yes, even Trump himself, spout their alternative worldview.


In addition to attacking facts, the Trumpeters have kept up their attacks on the media, keeping the narrative that started early in the campaign when someone asked Trump a question he didn't like, or reported facts that Trump didn't like, or doubted an answer that Trump provided, or used unflattering pictures of him.

Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, described by the San Antonio Current as Congress' top climate change denier (who's been into "alternative facts" long before they were cool), had this to say on the House floor the other day:

Just think what the media would be saying about President Trump if he were a Democrat. "He has tremendous energy. He campaigned for 18 months, puts in 15-hour days, and has the stamina of a bull elephant, like Teddy Roosevelt He is courageous and fearless. Given the amount of hate directed his way, no doubt he constantly receives death threats, but that doesn't curtail his public appearances or seem to worry him in the least..."

The national liberal media won't print that, or air it, or post it. Better to get your news directly from the president, In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.

OK, forget for a moment the fact that there's a whole lot more to being president than having stamina, even though Trump used that effectively during the primary (remember "Low Energy" Jeb! Bush?) and during the general election with his comments about Hillary Clinton. I don't think we'd have to look all that hard to find examples of effective presidents who did not possess elephantine strength.

The media would be saying about a Democrat who said what Trump says, does what Trump does, exactly what they're saying about Donald Trump. They would call a Democrat on their lies, point by point, just as they're doing with Trump. They would question a Democrat's every move, should a Democrat do the same as Trump is doing. 

But the second part, getting the unvarnished truth, from Donald Trump himself? Seriously? 

I've been plenty critical of the media and how they handled things from the very beginning of Trump's candidacy, but I would never shift my news (and opinion) sources from established media outlets - newspapers, magazines, TV news, public television, (and their online components, some of which are fine and some of which are horrid) and start using the the president or his minions as the source of truth, varnished or otherwise.

Because, Representative Smith, you're talking about the man who suggested this:

I'm going to open up our libel laws so when [journalists] write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.

You're talking about the man who

• banned media outlets during his campaign because they were 'mean' to him
• threatened a libel suit against the NY Times 
• thinks everything written or posted that is not flattering is fake news a lie, or a personal attack, 
• lies repeatedly, 
• appeared with an applauding crowd at his first 'press conference' and who takes a claque with him for other appearances. (And yes, in case you're wondering. claque is trending on MW).  

This is not the man who will provide us the unvarnished truth., unless you were thinking of the second definition, explained by the words crude and unfinished. Maybe that's what you meant?

No, this is the man who will provide us something else entirely. 

We'll get his view, which you might note, is in the bottom 50% of popular words, similar to Trump's approval rating according to Gallup and Quinnipiac polling after his first week in office. Coincidence, I wonder?

We'll get his opinion, his preference, his sentiment, his slant, and all the rest.

But at least for now, I'll look elsewhere for the truth. You can look to Trump for this other thing.