Against Trump II
“Only a free and unrestricted press can effectively expose deception in government”
Hugo Black
In my last blog I attempted to persuade anyone (especially friends) who voted for Trump to recognize the base personality that inhabits the man and informs his words and actions towards women. I realize that some of his supporters see his licentious language and behavior as irrelevant to national politics and therefore are unmoved by an appeal to decency. Others feel that Trump’s affairs are a private matter between him and his wife. “I am not going to judge Trump’s or anyone else’s sexual conduct,” they say. Of course, that is the approach Bill Clinton’s supporters used to excuse his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, which conservatives roundly and rightly still reject. A third, and perhaps the largest, group of voters simply don’t believe the news accounts describing Trump’s “amorous” assignations. In fact, this group considers reports criticizing the president as “fake news” manufactured by a biased and hostile media. And although vilification of the media has been a continual exercise by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and a host of radio dogmatists, what has added a dangerous impetus to the anti-media rantings is Trump’s own relentless crusade to destroy the media’s credibility.
Previous presidents have blamed the media for mistreating and misrepresenting them. Nixon’s antagonism with the media grew out of his paranoia that reporters would never give him an honest break. For all his complaining, Nixon never demonized publically news outlets or attempted to define all of them as dishonest purveyors of propaganda. On the other hand, Trumps have made it an almost daily ritual to malign the media (except Fox News). Here is a brief sample of his anti-media statements:
Rally in Phoenix, Arizona, August 22,2017.
Journalist are “sick people”; they are “trying to take away our history and heritage”; “I really think they don’t like our country.”
“If you want to discover the source of the division in our country, look no further than the fake news and the crooked media.”
"You're taxpaying Americans who love our nation, obey our laws, and care for our people. It's time to expose the crooked media deceptions, and to challenge the media for their role in fomenting divisions,"
Speech at CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, January 21, 2017.
“As you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.”
Tweet, November, 27,2017.
“We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including FOX, is the most dishonest corrupt and /or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive FAKE NEWS TROPHY!”
Tweet, February 17, 2017.
“The FAKE NEWS MEDIA (failing @nytimes, @NBC, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
These statements come from a man who also said, “I have great respect for the news and great respect for freedom of the press and all that.” Really? Does Trump think that anyone would be fooled by his inept dissimulation? Or that anyone forgets him calling the news media “scum,” “slime,” or “disgusting,”? The MIT professor, Noam Chomsky has remarked that “If we don’t believe in freedom of the expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” Clearly Trump believes in freedom of expression, but only for those who grovel before him, fawn over him or pander to his ego. The way Trump feels about the media was eloquently summed up by Mitt Romney: Donald Trump “applauds the prospect of twisting the constitution to limit First Amendment freedom of the press.”
Now, what I wish to call to the attention of Trump’s supporters is the real danger lurking in this presidency. Trump has espoused an affinity for dictators-Putin, Duterte, Xi. He admires their iron fisted control and, no doubt, would enjoy the power to rule as they do. He would like nothing more than to possess their power and use it to control and punish news media outlets that criticized him. But since that’s impossible, he incessantly strives to sully the reputations of every news organization that does not flatter him. And his followers regularly repeat his mantra that any media that criticises him is nothing more than “fake news.” What his followers fail to understand is the basic function of a free press. A free press has the responsibility to speak truth to power. That necessarily entails taking positions on issues. Therefore, whether a news outlet takes a position on the left or the right matters little. What matters most is that they report honestly the facts of the stories they cover. The New York Times leans to the left; The Wall Street Journal, to the right. Both paper have earned high and just praise for their journalism. Why? Because they each report accurately the stories they tell. Of course, the Times prefers to tends to be more critical of Republican presidents; the Journal, of Democratic ones. But each is fair, accurate and honest regarding the facts and, more importantly, the truth. Both papers and most of the television news, adhere to a credo set forth by George Orwell in The Prevention of Literature: “freedom of the press, if it means anything at all, means freedom to criticize and oppose.” Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal do both admirably.
If Trump supporters would finally accept the fact the media is doing a job essential to preserving democracy, and telling truths about Trump, then many of them would have the scales fall from their eyes and feel the sting of the light of reason. Shortly thereafter, they might suffer a spell of nausea as they recognized the infinite repugnance of Trump and, like Jeff Flake and a few others, see the patriotic duty defending the media against what John Brennan has rightly described as a “disgrace demagogue.”
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