NOTE: This op-ed on behalf of the editorial board of ScrappleFace is part of a nationwide effort by more than 100 newspapers this week to decry President Trump’s “anti-press rhetoric.” In observance of this watershed journalistic event, we ask that you suspend, if only for a moment, your lifelong habit of ignoring the editorial page. The comics can wait.

For the editorial board…

“The enemy of the people.”

That’s what President Donald Trump has called the news media.

In a Constitutional republic, this inflammatory rhetoric not only jeopardizes freedom of expression by rallying the mob to ignore or even to violently suppress the Fourth Estate, but as professional journalists we can testify that it makes us feel bad…real bad.

In addition to the hurt feelings we have so acutely suffered, it must be noted, Mr. President, that “we’re rubber and you’re glue. Anything you say bounces off of us and sticks to you.”

It is, in fact, you, Mr. President, who are the “enemy of the people.”

(Are too…Are too!)

Let the facts be submitted to a candid world.

After all, it’s not the media, but Donald J. Trump, who beat a woman out of a good-paying job with lifetime benefits — an elderly woman who had hoped that she would finally shatter the glass ceiling and occupy the White House. Denying Hillary Clinton what rightfully belonged to her constitutes an attack on all women.

Thus Trump, in one foul sweep, became enemy of roughly half of the people.

Among the remaining 7-in-10 Americans — the ones who get paid a dollar every time a woman earns 69-cents — many have been torn from their families and homes, and sent to labor outdoors or in factories, stores and office buildings by a president who cares so little about them that he hit the gas pedal on the economy, sparking nearly full employment. These newly-employed men, of all races and genders, have Trump to blame for the assault on their free time, not to mention the booster shot to their toxic masculinity.

“Enemy of the people” indeed!

And now we come to the bottom of the matter.

At its base, President Trump’s attacks on ‘fake news,’ or ‘the failing New York Times,’ demonstrate an infantile streak in his character. Such a person, who lashes out and throws tantrums at every perceived slight (or coordinated partisan impeachment campaign), lacks the maturity to walk in the footsteps of the smart, handsome and ineluctably cool President Barack Obama, our nominee for eternal friend of the people.

Mr. Trump, why can’t you be more like President Obama?

Why do you torment us so?

Can’t you see that by cooperating with the news media, instead of antagonizing us, together we could remake America the way it should have been again?