Time for another look at the week in politics with Ken Sikkema and Susan Demas.
There have been protests against the election of Donald Trump around Michigan and across the nation.
Many Republicans see these protesters as little more than sore losers throwing a fit.
Trump tweeted his thoughts on the protests Thursday night:
Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016
“When I get off this call, the first thing I’m going to do is send an email that says, ‘Dear Mr. President-elect, stop tweeting,’” Sikkema told us.
“I don’t want you to tweet. I want you to get your cabinet in place, read your intelligence briefings about what’s going on around the world and get about the hard business of running the government because the campaign is over. Stop tweeting,” he said.
That tweet was followed by another Friday morning:
Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016
“The first tweet came from Donald Trump, and the second tweet came from his staff cleaning it up,” Demas told us. “This is the pattern we saw during the election.”
We’ve also seen Trump display “great hostility” toward the First Amendment, she said.
“Everybody was hoping that all of a sudden he would become presidential after the election, and this is not a terribly encouraging sign,” she said.
“We in the media need to be very vigilant about this issue,” Demas said. “During the campaign Donald Trump banned reporters, he whipped up fury in his crowds against reporters, calling out people by name, and he also talked repeatedly about changing the First Amendment so it’s easier to go after reporters.”
“A president who talks about deploying nuclear weapons very casually and dismantling the First Amendment, that’s going a lot further than we’ve ever seen with a president-elect, and I think that bears attention,” Demas said.
Sikkema told us he’s “not going to judge President Trump based on candidate Trump. I’m going to judge President Trump based on what he does as president.”
“We can all hope that it was just heated rhetoric for a campaign,” Demas said. “I think we can also understand that those who were targets may not feel the same way.”
Listen to our conversation above for more.
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