Scott Dworkin urges the media to stop treating Trump like a normal politician. He is not.

Here is his advice for the press:

We’ve been talking a lot about how the mainstream media has failed to cover Trump and his campaign properly. All too often they simply parrot Donald’s propaganda as if it’s news, and give him unchecked airtime while he tells nothing but lies…

I am sick of the same garbage being tossed around like Donald is an average candidate, instead of the deranged and twisted wannabe dictator he has proven he wants to be.
Time and time again, Donald gets away with his lies and gaslighting. The Trump-supporting owners of mainstream media only want money, ratings, and for Donald to be elected. The journalists they employ are along for the ride.

Enough is enough.

Here are some simple things the Press must do to combat today’s lies from Donald during and after his lie-filled presser.

They Can’t Let Lies Slide

If a reporter asks Trump a question and he lies, they need to ask him why he’s lying. This isn’t hard. If it’s a lie, it’s a lie. It’s the journalist’s job to hold him accountable. And their duty to interrupt Trump and point out the facts, not to just nod their head along like he’s telling the truth.

Make Donald Answer the Question

The Press needs to stop letting Trump get away with dodging questions and lying in every answer. He isn’t smart enough to answer anything complex, so the questions they ask need to be as simple as possible. And they must keep pushing until they get a real answer. Don’t let him change the subject or move on from it. Get thrown out of his golf club if need be. But don’t let him steamroll you with his lies or misdirections.

Check the Facts

When Trump lies, hosts of shows should interrupt the broadcast to point out a lie and then correct the record. Or better yet, don’t air him live at all.

Cover it Critically

Press can’t just copy, paste and repeat any of the unhinged things Trump says into their headlines. And they can’t cut him slack and act like whatever he is saying is normal.

Stop Cowering

The mainstream media must start covering Trump as the maniacal liar in cognitive decline that he is. No more of the same weak treatment from the Press as if they don’t know who Donald is. They need to stop being afraid of him. And stop being scared of losing the job they aren’t actually doing.

When I go on tv, I get tons of threats immediately afterwards. It’s sadly part of the job, due to Trump’s constant attacks on journalists. But all threats do is drive me to do more, to dig in further on an investigation. To not stand down. And to keep going.

Last week our work helped garner more than 1.9 billion impressions on social media. Yesterday, we ran a campaign using the hashtag #TrumpWillCutSocialSecurity and thanks to everyone’s help it trended #10 in the US, garnered over 365 million impressions and even Mark Hamill joined in again!

Today we will share this post with millions of people to pressure mainstream media into properly covering this absurd Trump PR stunt. We’ll also be calling out individual journalists and networks, demanding they do better. I don’t expect immediate miracles, but they sure as heck will hear us.

The extremist culture warriors in Florida flopped at the ballot box on Tuesday. Not even Governor DeSantis’s endorsement helped them in their crusade to ban books, censor history, and sugarcoat what children may learn.

DeSantis quite deliberately set out to take control of Florida’s education system, including its schools and public colleges. He believes that as Governor, he is authorized to shape the curriculum to match his extremist agenda. He has poured billions into charter schools and vouchers for all, no income limits. He has grabbed control of the boards that oversee public colleges, and he has handpicked college presidents from his circle of cronies. The state’s sycophant legislature gives him whatever he wants, including the elimination of tenure in higher education and the ideological takeover of the state’s highly regarded progressive college, New College, which has been transformed into a conservative outpost that values athletics more than philosophy and that abhors gender studies and other “woke” courses.

Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel wrote about the voters’ rebuff to “Moms for Censorship,” err, “Moms for Thought Control, err, “Moms for Liberty.” Voters in most school districts rejected the right wingers endorsed by DeSantis.

Folks, this was a good day for the students and teachers of Florida.

He wrote:

Extremism took a beating in some unexpected places Tuesday. Orange County voters made the region’s deep-pocketed tourism interests nervous. And voters told has-been politicians who were desperately trying to get back into office that they needed to stay on the sidelines.

It was a momentous primary Election Day in Florida — one that seemed to suggest a course correction after years of divisive culture wars.

Nowhere was that more evident than in school board races where Moms for Liberty-backed candidates got walloped.

In Orange County’s highest-profile race, attorney Stephanie Vanos, who vocally opposed the Moms’ agenda, destroyed her opponent 68% to 32%. Seminole County also opted for candidates who wanted to return the focus to classroom basics.

And it wasn’t just here. In Republican-leaning Pinellas County, voters rebuffed Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attempts to get more culture-warriors on the school board. (See the Tampa Bay Times: “Pinellas voters ignore DeSantis endorsements, reelect school board incumbents”)

Even in hard-core Sarasota County — which helped give birth to the Moms-for-Censorship movement — voters decided they’d seen enough. Voters in that dark red county ousted the DeSantis-backed Moms for Liberty school board chair and ensured another culture-war crusader was kept out of office.

Politico also reported on voters’ rejection of DeSantis’s candidates. The results suggest that Tinpot Authoritarian DeSantis is losing his grip:

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attempt to elect conservative-leaning school board members across Florida hit a snag Tuesday, as candidates backed by the Republican governor fell in several key races.

DeSantis, who has made reshaping Florida’s education system a top priority, endorsed 23 candidates ahead of Tuesday’s election. And as of late Tuesday night, at least 11 appear to have lost. That is a notable downturn from 2022, when DeSantis saw a runaway success: Of the 30 he endorsed two years ago, just five lost.

Candidates endorsed by DeSantis won six races, according to unofficial county election results, with another six heading to runoffs in November.

Although Florida’s school board elections are nonpartisan, candidates in some high-profile races had dueling endorsements and donations from conservatives like DeSantis and the parents’ group Moms for Liberty, and state Democrats and the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

The school board elections come just months after DeSantis dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. During his governorship, DeSantis built clout and power throughout Florida, reshaping the state legislature, state Supreme Court and school boards through his endorsements or appointments. That his preferred school board candidates didn’t win Tuesday could be a sign of his decreasing influence in the wake of his failed presidential bid.

Out of the four matchups where DeSantis and the Florida Democratic Party went head-to-head, Democrats notched two wins compared to one for the governor, with another set for a runoff. These races were some of the more heated in Florida, as candidates squared off over issues like book banning and the role parents have in shaping their children’s education.

The Democratic Party of Florida endorsed 11 candidates this cycle, of which seven won Tuesday with two of those races heading to runoffs. The party’s efforts were meant to “fight back against Ron’s Moms for Liberty candidates and their partisan extremism,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried.

“When we knocked doors and made phone calls for these candidates, we kept hearing the same question from voters — ‘is your candidate going to ban books, or are they going to protect them?’” Fried said in a statement Tuesday night. “Our freedom starts in our schools, and we’re proud to have supported candidates who will fight for our students’ rights to see themselves represented in a book, to feel safe at school, and ensure every student has access to a high-quality education where they can learn and grow.”

Trump has repeatedly sneered at soldiers and veterans. He avoided service in Vietnam by getting five draft deferments from a podiatrist who rented a storefront office in Queens from Donald’s father. Fred Trump Sr. asked for a favor and he got it, according to the foot doctor’s daughters.

According to one of his chiefs of staff, General John Kelly, Trump called fallen soldiers “suckers” and “losers.” He couldn’t understand why they served. What was in it for them? He mocked Senator John McCain, who spent five years in a prison camp after his plane crashed in Hanoi. Trump said he didn’t like soldiers who had been captured.

His latest insult occurred recently. While he was President, he conferred the Presidential Medal of Freedom on friends, allies, professional athletes, and contributors. Among them were Congressman Jim Jordan, Rush Limbaugh, Orrin Hatch, and Edwin Meese. One recipient was Miriam Adelson, wife of the late casino mogul, Sheldon Adelson. The Adelsons were one of the biggest funders of his campaigns. Miriam is Israeli-born, and she is passionate in her support for Israel.

On Thursday he said that the Presidential Medal of Freedom–awarded to civilans for outstanding achievements–was “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor–awarded to soldiers for outstanding service to their country.

Michael Gold of The New York Times wrote this story:

Former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday described the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which honors civilians, as being “much better” than the Medal of Honor, because service members who receive the nation’s highest military honor are often severely wounded or dead.

Mr. Trump’s remarks follow a yearslong series of comments in which he has appeared to mock, attack or express disdain for service members who are wounded, captured or killed, even as he portrays himself as the ultimate champion of the armed forces.

At a campaign event at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., billed as a discussion about fighting antisemitism, Mr. Trump recounted how he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson, the Israeli-American widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. Ms. Adelson, who attended the event, is among his top donors.

“It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers, they’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead,” Mr. Trump said, using a common misnomer for the military award. “She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman.”

Standing in front of six American flags, Mr. Trump added that the honors were “rated equal.”

Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign spokesman, said that Mr. Trump’s comments referred to “how it can be an emotionally difficult experience to give the Congressional Medal of Honor to veterans who have been wounded or tragically killed defending our country, as he proudly did when he was commander in chief.”

But Mr. Trump’s remarks drew swift criticism from Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, who argued that he has exhibited a pattern of disrespect toward military service members that has made him unfit for command.

“Donald Trump knows nothing about service to anyone or anything but himself,” a spokeswoman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, Sarafina Chitika, said, adding that his comments “should remind all Americans that we owe it to our service members, our country, and our future to make sure Donald Trump is never our nation’s commander in chief again.”

Mr. Trump’s remarks also threatened to undermine efforts by his Republican allies to attack the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, over his military record. Mr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, who spent four years in the Marine Corps, has accused Mr. Walz of leaving the Army National Guard to avoid being deployed to Iraq and of exaggerating his service record to claim falsely that he had served in combat…

Mr. Vance on Friday defended Mr. Trump, telling reporters at a campaign event in Milwaukee that the former president was a “guy who loves our veterans and who honors our veterans.” Though he acknowledged he had not heard Mr. Trump’s full remarks, Mr. Vance characterized them as compliments for Ms. Adelson that were not “in any way denigrating those who received military honors.”

Mr. Trump, who never served in the military, has faced bipartisan blowback over his posture toward service members and veterans throughout his political career. While campaigning for president in 2016, he disparaged the record of Senator John McCain, a former naval aviator who was held prisoner for more than five years during the Vietnam War.

“He’s not a war hero,” Mr. Trump said then, adding, “I like people who weren’t captured.” Republicans, many then wary of Mr. Trump, immediately rushed to Mr. McCain’s defense.

Mr. Trump also during that campaign fought with the family of Humayun Khan, a slain Muslim-American soldier, after Mr. Khan’s father spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 and railed against Mr. Trump for smearing the character of Muslims. Mr. Trump argued the family had “no right” to criticize him, and the squabble led top Republicans to voice their solidarity with Mr. Khan’s family.

During his 2020 campaign, Mr. Trump was forced to defend his support for American troops after The Atlantic reported that he privately called American soldiers killed in combat “losers” and “suckers,” setting off a political firestorm.

Democrats highlighted the reported comments as evidence of his contempt for those who serve, and left-leaning veterans groups condemned him.

Mr. Trump has vigorously denied he made those remarks. But John F. Kelly, a retired four-star general who was once Mr. Trump’s White House chief of staff, confirmed the former president’s comments disparaging veterans. And at the time, people familiar with Mr. Trump’s private conversations said that he has long expressed scorn for those who served in Vietnam as not being smart enough to have gotten out of it, as he did through a medical diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels.

In a statement to CNN last year, Mr. Kelly cast Mr. Trump as “a person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”

Mr. Kelly’s statement came days after Mr. Trump suggested in a social media post that Gen. Mark A. Milley, his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed for treason over calls he made to Chinese officials to reassure them of the nation’s stability after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters.

Mr. Trump’s comments about military troops and veterans became an issue earlier this year during the Republican primary, after he insinuated that the husband of one of his rivals, Nikki Haley, accepted a deployment to Africa with the National Guard to escape her. The Haley campaign attacked Mr. Trump’s “anti-veteran record” and distributed an open letter from dozens of veterans that condemned his statements.

Mr. Trump met with Ms. Adelson on Thursday to reconcile with her after he insulted her over text messages sent by an aide at the end of July. When he bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to her in 2018, the White House cited her work supporting “Jewish schools, Holocaust memorial organizations, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and Birthright Israel, among other causes.”

The Presidential Medal of Freedom, established by President John F. Kennedy, is intended to honor people who have “made an especially meritorious contribution” to national security, world peace or “cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” A president may unilaterally bestow the award.

The Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest commendation for valor in combat, is awarded to a soldier who exhibited “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity” that went “beyond the call of duty” and involved “risk of life,” according to the Department of Defense. Being wounded or killed is not a requirement for receiving the medal, which is awarded only after approvals throughout the military chain of command.