When Esquire launched its latest edition with the cover story "Hater in Chief" over a not-so-flattering mugshot of Donald Trump, my first thought was about the way this sleazy magazine had libeled me a few years ago.
The date was May 18, 2011. Jerome Corsi's "Where's the Birth Certificate?" recently had rocketed to No. 1 at Amazon. Donald Trump had joined Corsi and me in making Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility an issue that could no longer be ignored by the media and political establishments. The day after the book hit the top of the charts, Obama dispatched his attorney to go fetch the long-form birth certificate he had steadfastly refused to release publicly for the previous three years – the one he spent millions in legal fees quashing lawsuits to produce.
Circumstances had obviously reached crisis proportions for Obama.
Within days, he was releasing a document he previously denied existed.
The media establishment breathed a collective sigh of relief. Without so much as looking at the document, they pronounced it was authentic and finally put to rest all questions of Obama's constitutional eligibility.
It was in that atmosphere that Esquire's Mark Warren wrote a fake, fraudulent, fabricated piece, complete with quotes made up out of whole cloth, claiming I was recalling Corsi's best-seller from bookstores. Though Warren and Esquire would later defend their attack by claiming it was parody, it had every major news organization in America fooled. My phone was ringing off the hook asking for verification of the report and for comments.
Then bookstores and retail chains started calling asking how to return the books.
My only option was to sue Esquire, owned by the Hearst Corporation, my employer for a decade.
We fought the good fight and lost.
But Donald Trump has other options in the wake of the magazine calling him "Hater in Chief."
He should turn around and buy Esquire and other so-called news organizations that attack him. He should then fire the culprits and bring in new management.
That would be justice. That would be getting the last laugh. That would be getting even.
The other way to deal with such attacks is turning them around – as Trump did effectively in a Fox News interview.
"If you think about it, I do hate what's happening in America," he said. "It's the mainstream media. They go that way. But I do hate what's happening to America so in that way, maybe it's a very accurate depiction."
Of course, it's not an accurate depiction to call Trump "Hater in Chief." It's slander. It's baseless. It's the exact opposite of the truth.
The "Hater in Chief" is the man currently occupying the White House – masquerading, with the help of an adoring media, as the "Commander in Chief."
Donald Trump has made an extraordinary impression on the American people with his presidential campaign to date. Remarkably, he has done it without spending much money. He's done it with the sheer power of his personality and celebrity.
But maybe – just maybe – he should consider spending some of his $9 billion fortune by investing in media and cleaning out the rats' nests of liars, con artists, traitors, ideologues, political activists pretending to be journalists and simultaneously restoring real government watchdogs to America's newsrooms.
That would be a landmark accomplishment as significant, or maybe more so, than winning the White House.
It's going to take that kind of cultural counterrevolution to "make America great again."
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
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