The Wheeling papers have certainly adapted well to the first year of the Trump presidency especially on subjects for which they routinely criticized the Obama administration. For the year, the "newspapers" have yet to criticize Trump for his use of executive orders -- something that was a regular feature of editorials and Mike Myer columns during the Obama administration. ("Obama's imperial presidency" as they and other rightwing media called it. See here, for example.) Similarly, criticism of the "growing national debt" which was a staple editorial during Obama's eight years in office disappeared as the Republican tax package was debated. It's back, of course, now that taxes have been cut and the papers can now editorialize about how we will need to cut social programs to prevent huge deficits.
Let me add one last hypocrisy to end the year: criticism of presidential vacation time. From time to time during the Obama presidency, the locals weighed in on the president's vacation time. For example, here's the entirety of a very short editorial from July 2014:
President Barack Obama slammed members of Congress last week for failing to address immigration reform.
“It is my hope that Speaker Boehner and House Republicans will not leave town for the month of August for their vacations without doing something to help solve this problem,” Obama said. “We need action and less talk.”
Really? Obama’s were strange comments indeed, coming from a president who has been out of town golfing and for political fundraisers during much of the past month.
The graph above, from MSNBC, is part of a post by Jason Easley in Politicus USA. Easley writes:
According to CBS News’ Mark Knoller, Obama took 26 days of vacation during his first year. Trump took nearly three times more vacation days than Ronald Reagan, who took 42 vacation days during his first year in office. George H.W. Bush spent 40 days on vacation. George W. Bush took 69 days of vacation. On the opposite side of spectrum Democrat Jimmy Carter took just 19 days, and Bill Clinton had 21 days of vacation during their respective first years in office.
Trump claimed on the campaign trail that Hillary Clinton did not have the energy to be president, but now that he is in the White House, Trump is setting records for presidential laziness that may never be touched. George W. Bush set off a national firestorm by vacationing so frequently as president, but W. looks like a workaholic next to Trump.
I guess if the local papers haven't criticized Trump's misogyny, racism, nativism, or lying, expecting that they would be critical of Trump's treating the presidency as a part-time job shouldn't surprise anyone in the Ohio Valley.
Finally:
Can you believe that,with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.Worse than Carter
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 14, 2014
