Media, DO YOUR JOB REGARDING DONALD TRUMP.

Flag, show us on the doll where the orange monster touched you....

Donald Trump is several things.  He's a misogynist, a bully, and a racist.  He's a blowhard, he's crass, and his ostentatious display of wealth represents the worst of humanity.  He is the living embodiment of the Scripture that teaches that the love of money is the root of all evil.  He only measures a person's goodness by relating it to what they can do for him, personally (work for him, do business with him, tell great stories about his wealth).  He has no use for anyone that can't do anything for him directly.  This includes the idiot voters who mistake the rantings of a power-mad lunatic for qualifications to be the President of the United States.

Donald Trump is also the presumptive Republican nominee for the Presidency of the United States.  Time and time again, he has proven just how unfit he is for office.  His response to every tragedy around the world is to somehow bring it back to how great he is.

The horrific Orlando shooting is no exception.  Rather than offer support to the families of the dead and injured, Trump took the moment to humble-brag by accepting congratulations from his supporters about how right they are about Trump's stance on Islam and terrorism.  He also went to one of his familiar trope of attacking President Obama.

Let's be clear.  Trump has been attacking President Obama from the beginning, by launching and supporting birtherism.  Trump has been peddling in the filth of racism and bigotry for years, and his "campaign" to prove that President Obama was not a U.S. Citizen led to a demand that a sitting President "show his papers" to prove that he's a citizen.  So, Trump's latest salvo against the President comes as no surprise.

This time, Trump suggests that President Obama is either weak, or secretly a Muslim terrorist sympathizer.  These were Trump's words.

 “What I want them to do is be tough and vigilant. Our government, we’re led by a man that is a very– look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind. And the something else in mind, you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot — they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the ways he acts and can’t even mention the words radical Islamic terrorism. There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on, and I know there’s gonna be.”

Seriously.

Now, it's time for the real media to do its job.  Jake Tapper did a brilliant job of holding Trump to his comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel.  Tapper did not let up on calling Trump on Trump's insistence that Curiel's Hispanic background somehow disqualified the judge from the case involving the fraudulent Trump University.

Again, Trump is the Republican Party's standard bearer, and that party's nominee for the Presidency.  Tapper interview notwithstanding, the media outlets have literally been letting Trump phone in the interviews, direct the conversation, and dictate what should or shouldn't be discussed.  In light of Trump's callous and un-statesmanlike response to the Orlando shooting, the media should be asking him tough questions.  Questions like:

• Early on in Trump's campaign, he stated that he knows how to defeat ISIS, and that he knows more than the media and the generals.  What does he know, how did he acquire the information, and why is he holding it from the American people?  If his response is that he won't reveal his plans to defeat ISIS unless/until he is elected President, ask him why he is blackmailing American citizens.
• Since the attacker in the Orlando shooting was born in America, how would his plan to deport Muslims affect American-born Muslims?  Will they be rounded up and placed in concentration or internment caps?
• Would he agree with President Obama's comments about someone on an FBI terrorist watch-list still being able to buy a gun?  Or does he support the NRA's assertion that everybody should have guns, and regulation is for commies?
• What is he willing to do to address conservative supporters that wallow in Christian extremism, who treat the Orlando shooting as an example of God's divine retribution?

The media should be asking him these questions all the time.  And they should not let him off the hook.  They should demand that he answer the questions, or declare that the interview is over.  They shouldn't allow him to phone interviews in, as he has abused phone privileges.  Media outlets, hold him accountable or you risk a journalistic catastrophe on par with the appalling run-up to the Iraq War.

You have a job to do, media.

DO YOUR JOB.