“Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.”

Those are the immortal words of Buck Murdock, played by William Shatner, in the classic 1982 movie, “Airplane II.” They apply today to the president of the United States.

Six of his last seven tweets, as of 12:15 p.m. Central time Wednesday, June 28, 2017, were accusing various news outlets of publishing fake news.

This comes on the heels of the news that Trump himself and his chain of golf clubs have published fake news of their own.

According to the fact-checking Snopes website:

On 27 June 2017, the Washington Post published a story about decor at four of President Donald Trump’s golf resorts. It revealed that the resorts contained bogus magazine covers made up to look like issues of Time featuring Trump on the cover and promoting his reality television show “The Apprentice”:

It is not clear who created this fake Time cover — or why.

Its date might be a clue: March 1, 2009, was the season debut of Trump’s show “The Celebrity Apprentice.” But a transcript of that show offers no answers. In that episode, various B-list celebrities competed to sell cupcakes, and Trump fired comedian Andrew Dice Clay for poor performance. Nobody mentioned Time magazine.

While it’s not difficult to mock up a fake cover using graphic-design software, whoever made this one sought out real Time headlines, to add to the fake.

The faux covers were dated 1 March 2009 — the same day the show premiered — but as the Washington Post article noted, the magazine did not publish an issue on that date. However, it did publish an issue a day later with actress Kate Winslet on the cover, and which did not mention Trump at all.

In other words, the Trump Organization publicly posted information which was falsely represented as being from Time magazine, with the obvious intent of impressing and perhaps influencing members of the clubs.

In what way is that any different from what Trump continually accuses multiple mass media outlets of doing? It’s an attempt to influence people of wealth and influence by posting an image that looks like a Time magazine cover but in fact is not. The “fake news” is the false cover. It’s completely fake. Are we to derive from this revelation that a practice that the president constantly criticizes others of doing is okay for the president himself?

Some context can be derived from the newly published book, “Fixing Post-Truth Politics:”

We will reveal in this book how we as a country and society got to a point where individuals as unsuited as (Hillary) Clinton and Trump emerged as the nominees of their respective parties. Polls conducted during the presidential campaign revealed that the U.S. population views the news media in an even more negative light than the candidates. There is a connection there, which we will also explore in this book.

The United States is at a critical point in its political and cultural history. Tensions are high for many reasons, not the least of which is the growth of minority demographics. In 2015, more minority babies were born in the U.S. than Caucasian babies. In 30 to 40 years, Caucasians will be less than 50 percent of the country’s population. The U.S.A. will not have a racial majority, meaning that cultural clashes will continue and perhaps be even more pronounced. The country needs people of standout intelligence, leadership, and integrity to be willing to lead our nation. But those people are not volunteering for the job, once considered the most illustrious and prestigious in the country. Why not? We’ll examine that point as well.

You’ll read two main sections of this book:

• The history and perfect storm of cultural changes that led up to the 2016 presidential election season; and
• What we as a society must do to increase the quality of candidates presented to us on our general election ballots.

Changes must happen. The United States electorate must not allow the choice of president in 2020 to be between such unqualified individuals. We must strive for the standard of nominating the cream of the crop, who are the best of what our country has to offer. The intent of this book is to begin the discussion of how we as an electorate and a society make that happen.

The latest Trump revelation is another in a steady and constant stream of reminders that what is good for Donald Trump is often more important than what is good for the country. The U.S. electorate cannot allow people like this into the country’s highest office moving forward. Learn what can be done NOW by reading “Fixing Post-Truth Politics.”