As leaders sing election Kumbaya, TV pundits sharpen the knives

If you watched TV or your mobile platforms yesterday, you saw two very distinct reactions to Donald Trump’s election to the presidency.

There was some uplifting, classy, authentic positive sentiment provided by President Obama, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday, in an attempt to heal an obviously divided nation following the most bruising, nasty presidential campaign ever.

{mosads}“Donald Trump is going to be our president,” Clinton said in her concession speech in New York. “We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead.”

“President-elect Trump promised to rebuild our economy for working people, and I offer to put aside our differences and work with him on that task,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement to the Boston Globe. 

“Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country,” Trump said.

“I mean that very sincerely.”

“One thing you realize in this job is that the presidency — or the vice presidency — is bigger than all of us,” Obama said in the Rose Garden. “Everybody is sad when their side loses an election. But we have to remember that we are all on the same team.

“This is an intramural scrimmage. We’re Americans first. We’re patriots first.”

The president backed up his words with action, inviting President-elect Trump to the White House in a show of unity that will dominate headlines and optics on Thursday.

But not everyone has coming together as a nation in mind. On CNN in prime time Wednesday night, there was extended implication about internment camps in the U.S. under a Trump administration.

The dialogue began when CNN contributor Kayleigh McEnany called former “Crossfire” host Van Jones to repudiate fears that Trump might create internment camps for illegal immigrants.

“Donald Trump has never proposed internment camps!” McEnany scolded Jones. “You have to correct that fear,” she pleaded.

“You don’t get to lecture me on this stage,” Jones retorted.

“You guys won, and you need to back off,” the former (short-lived) Obama administration “green czar” warned. “You need to have a little bit of empathy and understanding for people who are afraid, because your candidate has been one of the most explosively provocative candidates in the history of our country. And there’s a price to be paid for that.”

CNN contributor Jeffrey Lord then jumped in.

“Van, we’ve had this conversation before. But you cannot spend 200-plus years marinating in a culture of racism,” explained Lord, adding, “I’m sorry. the other day you sat on this set and talked about ‘whitelash.'”

#Whitelash — which isn’t racist or anything — has since gone viral. In a related story, according to exit polls, Trump received a lower percentage of the white vote than Mitt Romney received in 2012 (59 to 58 percent). Clinton’s numbers among blacks and Latinos dropped a combined 11 percent. But racial polarization has always been Jones’s shtick and somehow keeps him employed to share his thoughts in front of millions of people per week. If it ain’t broke…

“The point is you are dividing white people the same way you are dividing black people,” Lord, a Trump supporter, continued. “You are not treating people as individual Americans and that is the problem and you do it all the time.”

Jones responded thusly: “Wag your finger at me and this is going to get bigger and bigger. So go ahead.”

Over the next four years, Jones will make sure the narrative does get bigger, with many in the press cheering him on.

This is what passes as the oft-described “conversation about race” these days on cable news. It plays into stirring the pot and tapping into the worst in people.

But Jones is getting clicks, maybe he’s pushing the quarter-hour ratings up. He’s drawing attention. And that’s only good for the network, with possible ramifications of such rhetoric a distant fourth.

“You’re not dead and you haven’t gone to hell,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, serving as an “anchor” on election night, told viewers on Oct. 7 regarding Trump. “This is your life now.”

And this kind of poignant analysis isn’t just on cable news, but in our print media.

Here’s one headline from a Top 10 U.S. newspaper based on circulation figures:

Our front page for Wednesday:
HOUSE OF HORRORS: Trump seizes Divided States of America https://t.co/KKePm7uBhV #ElectionNight pic.twitter.com/HcuYeizg3j

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) November 9, 2016

Islamist extremists celebrate Trump’s election win — Washington Post

Donald Trump Win Has Blacks, Hispanics and Muslims Bracing for a Long 4 Years — New York Times

You get the idea.

President Obama and Donald Trump meet at the White House Thursday in a show of unity to the nation. The world will be watching. Hopefully some feeling anxious will be pacified by the sight of current president and future president coming together.

They don’t like each other much. But the president put partisanship and personal feelings aside for the good of the country.

The same kudos should be applied to Trump, Clinton and Warren for getting past the past with their public positive sentiment on Wednesday as well.

But don’t tell that to some in the media, whose goal is to divide and conquer in an effort to promote one a bigger causes in their own mind:

Bringing attention to themselves for all the wrong reasons.