Friday Trump (#notmypresident) escalated his attack on the free press to new levels. After first excoriating what he called “fake news” at CPAC and then later on Twitter, the White House then barred reporters from certain news organizations (The NYT, BuzzFeed News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times, Politico, BBC, and HuffPost) from a press briefing. Conservative-leaning organizations such as Fox News, The Washington Times, The One America News and the mainstream outlets ABC, NBC, CBS were allowed, as was that purveyor of racism, homophobia, and general bigotry, Breitbart News. The Washington Post chose not to send a reporter. I’m sure their reporter, too, would have been barred. This action contradicts what Trump’s press secretary claimed in December. Trump has said that he doesn’t mind criticism, yet this shows with glaring clarity that he cannot stand to told again and again that he and his administration are having problems. He is attempting to use the power of of the White House and the Presidency to stifle dissent: directly by shutting the press out and indirectly by making people distrust the press. He asks that we trust HIM, the prince of lies! If you’ve been fact-checking, you know that Trump cannot make a speech or indeed have a simple conversation without uttering lies. (I’m not going to make nice and use pretty language. He flat-out lies.) He makes claims such as “The administration is running like a fine-tuned machine” and “We’ve spent 6 trillion dollars in the Middle East.” Does he not know or care that not just reporters but ordinary citizens (like me) are, one, watching the chaotic mess that is his administration and, two, fact-checking what he says? Oh, wait, I forgot…this is the administration that deals in “alternative facts” with an “alt-right” chief strategist at the White House and a favored “alt-right” news outlet. This is NOT normal behavior, even for a paranoid president! Nixon didn’t do this, and he had his truly bizarre moments. Clinton didn’t do this, even during the whole Monica Lewinsky thing. But Trump is barely into his Presidency and already he has designated the press “an enemy of the people”. Not of HIM, mind you. We, the citizens of the the United States, are now supposed to be on our guard against not ISIS but the NYT, the Washington Post, Politico, and other liberal media. I don’t know about you, but my fears are directed towards the White House and its current occupants, as well as his Republican minions. To use that famous quote from The Fly, “Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.”
Tag: First Amendment
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Trump’s Continuing Attack On the First Amendment
With his tweet stating that those burning the American flag should have their citizenship revoked and/or face a year’s imprisonment, Trump again went to war against the First Amendment. Let’s have a look at it, just in case anyone needs a reminder:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of their grievances.
I have pondered the question of whether or not he actually knows what it says. If yes, then he is more machiavellian than I care to contemplate and is very deliberately setting about challenging it. If no, which is what I suspect, then he needs a refresher course in basic American civics. Despite what he may think, even the POTUS is not above the law. He is reportedly considering a registry for Muslims and during his campaign ran on the promise to ban all Muslims from entering the country; he has threatened repeatedly to open up libel laws, sue various news media, thrown journalists out of his rallies, ridiculed a disabled jounalist, and made insulting remarks about news media that published articles he found less than flattering. Since the election, he has held few press conferences, abandoned having a press corps, and instead communicates by tweets. He has shown his usual hostility to coverage that does not cater to his ego (CNN-how dare they report factually!) and then went on further to show his contempt for the FA with his flag burning tweet.
This is all part and parcel of a disturbing pattern. Trump does NOT LIKE anyone having the power to disagree with him or show him in any light that is less than wonderful. That would be fine, were he just a businessman. But he will be POTUS. He lashes out immediately via twitter to vent his ire. Will he be able to translate his consuming ego and its march upon the First Amendment into real action? Will the the press (and even perhaps blogs like this one) lose their voice to dissent? Much depends upon his Supreme Court appointee(s). He doesn’t have the power as POTUS that he might wish; there ARE checks and balances. Yes, he does wield executive order, but that only carries for certain things. The next four years will be interesting. (I’m reminded of the Chinese curse-“may you live in intersting times!”