In case you missed it, Donald Trump started the year by announcing that he would be holding “THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR”. Unsurprisingly, last week he tweeted that his Fake News Awards were to be suspended until Wednesday, January 17th because of their overwhelming importance.
Those in the US media have responded with great hilarity, with Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert releasing spoof ads asking to be considered in all of the “awards” categories. You can see a spoof done by Jimmy Fallon here:
But now experts say that Trump’s awards could violate ethics laws.
While the president himself is not subject to the executive branch of ethical standards, his staff are. And here lies a massive problem. Norman Eisen, the former special counsel for ethics for Barack Obama claims that:
“the issue is if the president enlists others in government to use government time or government resources to attack certain media outlets, while implicitly preferring others.”
There is an endless amount of mystery around the ceremony that has led to speculation about who could be singled out, what this is actually going to look like. Maybe the creator of the “Awards” might even take home the biggest award of the night as a joke? Literally next to no information has been given out except for how weird and ethically wrong this is.
These Fake News Awards might seem ridiculous and another thing to add to the ever-growing list of Trump’s Twitter blunders, but the wider issue at stake, his war on media, is quite terrifying. Where might his vendetta against America’s news outlets go?
The fact that I am even here, writing an article about the unethical nature of the 45th President of the United States, wondering what might happen today at his Fake News Awards is beyond comprehension.
Featured Image via Unsplash
I love this. So. Much.
Good share.