July 28-29, 2018: The President Savages the Free Press - and His Fans Don't See the Danger

 

7/28/18: Trump heads for Bedminster, New Jersey to spend another weekend at one of his ritzy, private golf clubs.

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7/29/18: Trump is still at Bedminster, but he’ll be back at the White House around 7:30 p.m., just in time to don his jammies, grab his remote, and watch TV. 

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The president’s deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric.

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Meanwhile, Horndog Rudy is making the Sunday talk show rounds. He insists that the tape of the president and Cohen talking about payoffs to a Playboy Bunny puts Trump in the clear. No laws were broken, Rudy claims. 

As for Cohen, who now plans to turn on his old boss, Giuliani calls him a “pathological manipulator.” 

Trump hired the guy. How terrible is Trump’s judgment??

 

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Trump see's Jim Acosta as more of an enemy than Vladimir Putin.

“Dangerous and harmful to the country.” 

SINCE TRUMP has nothing much to do on a lazy Sunday, he decides to tweet about a meeting he had nine days earlier with A. G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times. Here’s how the president describes the conversation: 

Had a very good and interesting meeting at the White House with A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times. Spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, “Enemy of the People.” Sad! 

 

Sad, it is. Just not for the reasons the president thinks. 

Trump’s fury, aimed squarely at the free press and the First Amendment, finally boils over. A series of four ominous tweets follows in rapid order. Once again, we’ll just dig out the key phrases: “the media – driven insane by their Trump Derangement Syndrome,” “Very unpatriotic!” “I will not allow our great country to be sold out [emphasis added] by anti-Trump haters.” 

This marks the first time the president says he won’t allow the free press to continue to hold him to account. 

Sulzberger has seen enough. The New York Times has no choice but to respond. First, the paper notes, the meeting was held at the request of the White House. Second, discussion was off the record, as Trump requested. Now, the president has revealed the discussion and mischaracterized what was said. Sulzberger provides his side in a blunt statement, which should be quoted in full: 

My main purpose for accepting the meeting was to raise concerns about the president’s deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric.

 

I told the president directly that I thought that his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous [emphasis added throughout, unless otherwise noted].

 

I told him that although the phrase “fake news” is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists “the enemy of the people.” I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.

 

I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists. I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.

 

Throughout the conversation I emphasized that if President Trump, like previous presidents, was upset with coverage of his administration he was of course free to tell the world. I made clear repeatedly that I was not asking for him to soften his attacks on The Times if he felt our coverage was unfair. Instead, I implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country.  

 

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HERE IT SEEMS WORTHWHILE to note that the president is not the first powerful leader who has made clear he would love to stifle critics. (See: 7/25/18.)  

Consider similar complaints about the free press from another powerful elected official. Reading an opposition newspaper, this leader explained, caused a “fury” to rise inside him. This paper was a “concentrated solution of lies,” a “delusive welter of words.” The enemy of the people was obvious: “the brutal daily press, shunning no villainy, employing every means of slander, lying with such a virtuosity that would bend iron beams, all in the gospel of a new humanity.” The free press was a “villainous poisoner” of the people’s minds. (See also: 7/4/18.) 

And when he came to power, that leader, Adolf Hitler, made it clear he would reshape the press to serve his needs. 

 

Forty-five tweets. 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: If you check Trump’s Twitter feed, as I did in early February 2020, you can see how many times the word “enemy” appears. The list is instructive. Before taking office, Trump used the word “enemy” to describe China seven times. So far, so good. Taliban and ISIS fighters were the “enemy,” as well (five mentions). Okay. Then, “Obama is our worst enemy.” 

Okay, nuts. 

It’s instructive what happens once Trump takes office. Suddenly, he has a new Enemies List. At one point, “McCain emboldens our enemy.” The Taliban is still our enemy – in a single tweet. Russia is never mentioned once. Nor is Kim Jong-un. Jay Powell, Trump’s own pick to head the Federal Reserve, is called an “enemy” twice. Jay Powell is worse than Kim Jong-un? 

President Trump does get it right on occasion. Assad and the Syrians he calls our “enemy” four times.

 

But who does he think is the great “enemy” today? What group threatens America most? Neo-Nazis? Sexual predators? Child traffickers? Russians bent on hacking the 2020 election? China, ever expanding its reach in the Pacific? 

No. In 45 tweets, the “Fake News” people are described as the “enemy of the people.” (God only knows how many times Trump has said the same on TV.) It is the greatest attack on a free press since the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed in 1798, making it illegal for anyone to criticize the president or members of Congress. Perhaps Trump fans take all their other rights for granted, save only the Second Amendment and their right to say, “Merry Christmas” willy-nilly. History provides warning. We almost lost our freedoms in our nation’s infancy. The free press was nearly stifled less than a decade after the U.S. Constitution was adopted. 

Trump supporters fail to see it. Or they’re too busy cheering Trump’s attacks. Sadly, many of them are all in on the president’s attack. They believe what he shouts. They accept his fury. They insist Trump has every right to attack those who criticize him. But once you lose the free press – once our side loses it – and once they agree our side should lose it – you will never get it back. 

Not even for yourselves.

A few examples.