Tag: Trump attack on the U.S. Constitution

Conservatives’ war on the press has gotten dangerous — and it’s only going to get worse

Credit: Melissa Joskow, Media Matters

President Donald Trump’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric is putting the lives of American journalists at risk, Mother Jones’ Mark Follman reported Thursday, citing comments from law enforcement leaders and top security officials at two major news outlets.

Trump’s years of vicious invective — echoed by his allies at Fox News — are bearing fruit. Reporters are facing a surge in bomb and death threats, organized harassment, online publication of their personal information (“doxxing”), and threatening mail sent to their home addresses, Follman’s sources warn. One security director at a major television news network told Follman that the threats spike when Trump rails against the network by name, with the harassers often using Trump’s “fake news” language, and that they are primarily aimed at journalists who report on the White House and the Trump-Russia probe — the very targets of the president’s ire.

This heightened fear of violence against reporters will certainly continue throughout Trump’s tenure as president. There’s no indication that he will ever stop demonizing journalists — this is a deliberate strategy to discredit them for political gain that he has continued employing even after a man was arrested for threatening to murder reporters while using Trump’s anti-press rhetoric. But there’s reason to fear that even after Trump is no longer president — especially if he wins re-election in 2020 — his party will continue down the same path. Naked, vicious hostility to the press could become a central plank of the Republican Party, turning elevated concerns about potential violence into the new normal.

View the complete September 14 article on the MediaMatters.org website here.

Trump suggests that protesting should be illegal

The following article by Felicia Sonmez was posted on the Washington Post website September 5, 2018:

President Trump has long derided the mainstream media as the “enemy of the people” and lashed out at NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem. On Tuesday, he took his attacks on free speech one step further, suggesting in an interview with a conservative news site that the act of protesting should be illegal.

Trump made the remarks in an Oval Office interview with the Daily Caller hours after his Supreme Court nominee, Brett M. Kavanaugh, was greeted by protests on the first day of his confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill.

“I don’t know why they don’t take care of a situation like that,” Trump said. “I think it’s embarrassing for the country to allow protesters. You don’t even know what side the protesters are on.”

View the complete article here.

‘Totally dishonest’: Trump asserts only he can be trusted over opponents and ‘fake news’

The following article by Ashley Parker was posted on the Washington Post website August 30, 2018:

President Trump criticized the media, calling many reports “fake news” at a rally on Aug. 2 in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (The Washington Post)

Over roughly the past day, President Trump has decried the “totally dishonest” media, with its “fake news” and “fake books.” He has argued that Google is biased against conservatives. And he has accused NBC News of “fudging” the tape of an interview with him that has been available online for more than a year.

The president has even declared there is no chaos in his White House, which he claimed is a “ ‘smooth running machine’ with changing parts,” despite the tumult that emanates almost daily from within its walls.

Trump’s assertions — all on Twitter, some false, some without clear evidence — come just over nine weeks before the midterm elections that could help determine his fate, and they are bound by one unifying theme: All of his perceived opponents are peddling false facts and only Trump can be trusted.

View the complete article here.

Trump responds after hundreds of newspaper editorials criticize his attacks on the press

The following article by Lindsey Bever and Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., was posted on the Washington Post website August 16, 2018:

In a coordinated response to President Trump, hundreds of U.S. newspapers published editorials defending press freedom on Aug. 16. (Reuters)

Hundreds of newspaper editorial boards across the country answered a nationwide call Thursday to express disdain for President Trump’s attacks on the news media, while some explained their decision not to do so. The same morning, the president tweeted that the “fake news media” are the “opposition party.”

The editorials came after the Boston Globe’s editorial board called on others to use their collective voice to respond to Trump’s war of words with news organizations in the United States.

Trump has labeled the news media “the enemy of the American people” and called much of the coverage “fake news.”

View the complete article here.

Free Press Gets a Boost With Senate Resolution Declaring It Is Not the Enemy

The following  article by Niels Lesniewski was posted on the Roll Call website August 16, 2018:

Action comes on same day newspapers coordinate on free press message

Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii is leading a resolution to defend press freedoms. Credit: Tom Williams, CQ Roll Call file photo

The Senate on Thursday went on record declaring “that the press is not the enemy of the people” — a rebuke to President Donald Trump, who declares the opposite on a regular basis.

Senators adopted by unanimous consent a resolution from Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York to declare the Senate’s support for a free press and the First Amendment protections afforded to journalists.

The resolution text was released the same day 350 newspapers ran editorials designed to push back on Trump’s criticisms of the media.

View the complete article here.

Trump Claims Power to Bypass Limits Set by Congress in Defense Bill Image

The following article by Charlie Savage was posted on the New York Times website August 14, 2018:

President Trump during the bill’s signing ceremony on Monday. He deemed 51 of the law’s statutes to be unconstitutional intrusions on his presidential powers. Credit: Tom Brenner for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — When President Trump signed a $716 billion military spending bill on Monday, he claimed the authority to override dozens of provisions that he deemed improper constraints on his executive powers.

In a signing statement that the White House quietly issued after 9 p.m. on Monday — about six hours after Mr. Trump signed the bill in a televised ceremony at Fort Drum in New York — Mr. Trump deemed about 50 of its statutes to be unconstitutional intrusions on his presidential powers, meaning that the executive branch need not enforce or obey them as written.

Among them was a ban on spending military funds on “any activity that recognizes the sovereignty of the Russian Federation over Crimea,” the Ukrainian region annexed by Moscow in 2014 in an incursion considered illegal by the United States. He said he would treat the provision and similar ones as “consistent with the president’s exclusive constitutional authorities as commander in chief and as the sole representative of the nation in foreign affairs.”

View the complete article here.

More than 100 newspapers will condemn Trump’s attacks on the media

The following article by Alison Durkee was posted on the Mic.com website August 13, 2018:

Following an appeal from the Boston Globe, more than 100 publicationsnationwide are preparing to decry President Donald Trump’s characterization of the media as an “enemy of the people.”

The Globe is reaching out to newspaper editorial boards to publish opinion pieces Thursday defending journalism, as part of a coordinated response to Trump’s repeated attacks on the media, which he frequently refers to as “fake news.”

“This dirty war on the free press must end,” the Globe’s appeal said, the Guardian reported. “Publications, whatever their politics, could make a powerful statement by standing together in the common defense of their profession and the vital role it plays in government for and by the people.”

View the complete article here.

‘Not the enemy of the people’: 70 news organizations will blast Trump’s attack on the media

The following article by Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., was posted on the Washington Post website August 12, 2018:

President Trump is not the first leader to label journalists as “enemies of the people” and creators of “fake news.” Credit: Melissa Macaya, The Washington Post

For most of the past 19 months, President Trump’s war of words with American news organizations has been more of a one-sided barrage — at least according to the Boston Globe’s editorial board.

Trump labeled the news media “the enemy of the American people” a month after taking the oath of office. In the year that followed, a CNN analysis concluded, he used the word “fake” — as in “fake news,” “fake stories,” “fake media” or “fake polls” — more than 400 times. He once fumed, the New York Times reported, because a TV on Air Force One was tuned to CNN.

And last week, at a political rally in Pennsylvania, Trump told his audience that the media was “fake, fake disgusting news.”

View the complete article here.

Media boost security as Trump ramps up ‘enemy’ rhetoric

The following article by Jason Schwartz was posted on the Politico website August 9, 2018:

TV networks are employing security guards at the president’s high-octane rallies.

Videos from President Trump’s Make America Great Again Rally in Florida on July 31 captured Trump supporters yelling and chanting at journalists and trying to disrupt a live shot by CNN’s Jim Acosta. Credit: Joe Raedlekk, Getty Images

Notebooks, mics, cameras, hairspray — those are all things TV reporters are used to having with them at political rallies. Now, in the age of President Donald Trump, they’ve added another: security guards.

The networks are employing them, according to reporters, at Trump’s high-octane political rallies, where the media often serves as the No. 1 rhetorical punching bag.

Last weekend, NBC News White House correspondent Geoff Bennett posted a picture on Instagram of himself with a member of the NBC security detail at Trump’s Ohio rally, commenting, “We need security guards when covering rallies hosted by the President of the United States. Let that sink in.” Meanwhile, ABC News reporter Tara Palmeri tweeted and wrote about covering the Ohio rally, “for the first time with a bodyguard.”

View the complete article here.

Trump Will Have Blood on His Hands

The following commentary by Bret Stephens was posted on the New York Times August 3, 2018:

His demonization of the news media won’t fall on deaf ears.

The crowd at a Make America Great Again rally in Pennsylvania, stoked by President Trump’s statements, was particularly hostile to the press. Credit: Al Drago, The New York Times

The voice, if I had to guess, belongs to that of a white American male in late middle age. The accent is faintly Southern, the manner taunting but relaxed. It’s also familiar: I’m pretty sure he’s left a message on my office number before. But the last voice mail left almost no impression. Not this time.

“Hey Bret, what do you think? Do you think the pen is mightier than the sword, or that the AR is mightier than the pen?”

He continues: “I don’t carry an AR but once we start shooting you f—ers you aren’t going to pop off like you do now. You’re worthless, the press is the enemy of the United States people and, you know what, rather than me shoot you, I hope a Mexican and, even better yet, I hope a n— shoots you in the head, dead.”

View the complete post here.