We had all hoped that White House brownshirt-in-chief Steve Bannon was just speaking for himself when demanded that the media “keep its mouth shut” until it understands why Donald Trump won the election. Well, any hope of that is gone. In the space of just a few hours on Sunday morning, the president himself loudly suggested that one of his staunchest critics be sold to less critical hands, while one of his top minions demanded that media outlets fire reporters who were even mildly critical of Trump during the election.
In the face of furious criticism over his order to shut down the refugee program and ban anyone from seven Muslim countries from coming in, it was only a matter of time before Trump went into one of his patented rage tweets. Just hours after The New York Times rightly blasted his move as “cowardly and dangerous,” the Troll-in-Chief didn’t disappoint.
Somebody with aptitude and conviction should buy the FAKE NEWS and failing @nytimes and either run it correctly or let it fold with dignity!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017
Trump has said, written, and tweeted some very outrageous things over the years. But this is one of the worst, and possibly THE worst. Unless I’m very wrong, the president of the United States has called for someone friendly to him to buy an outlet that has been a thorn in his side for a year and a half. What else can you conclude from Trump’s implication that the Ochs-Sulzberger family, owners of the Old Grey Lady since 1896, doesn’t have the “aptitude and conviction” to run the paper?
That should send a chill down the spine of anyone who cares about democracy. Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker came to the same conclusion.
This is what dictators do. They try to silence independent outlets by encouraging rich friends to buy or close them. We are in a scary place https://t.co/0BFKv1Pqed
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) January 29, 2017
So did Brian Klaas of the London School of Economics.
Attacks on legitimate media that holds power to account is a routine precursor to the rise of authoritarianism. https://t.co/vGDqlNfjuy
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) January 29, 2017
Times reporter Jonathan Weisman–who was the target of some ugly anti-Semitic smears from pro-Trump thugs during the campaign–probably spoke for The Times newsroom when he fired off this tweet.
We are rightly proud of our journalism and will not be intimidated. Thank you Sulzberger family for the "correctness" of your running. https://t.co/UvUFvA3TmO
— (((JonathanWeisman))) (@jonathanweisman) January 29, 2017
Let’s backtrack a bit. We can make one more assumption from this latest Trump morning rage tweet. Bannon was indeed speaking for the White House when he called for the media to zip its lips. Any doubt of that was erased when Trump information minister Kellyanne Conway publicly called for Trump critics to get pink slips.
Conway already had one cringe-worthy moment on Fox News Sunday. She sniffed at the chaos unleashed by Trump’s executive order shutting down the refugee program and banning people from seven Muslim countries entering the country, even though it resulted in families being disrupted. To Kellyanne’s mind, it was just “a small price to pay” to keep terrorists out of the country.
But then Conway outdid herself after host Chris Wallace turned the conversation to Bannon’s demand that the media keep quiet. Watch here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIu9xY4T9T8
Near the tail end of the interview, Wallace asked Conway if she understood just how “offensive” Bannon’s comments were. Conway replied that what was really “offensive” was that much of the press never took Trump’s candidacy seriously, and still isn’t giving Trump the deference that is now due him as president.
Apparently Conway thought Wallace would nod along, like his colleagues at “Fox & Friends” did. But Wallace was having none of it. He asked Conway if he considered his questions to be “legitimate questions.” Conway dissembled about how a number of reporters said things on Twitter that “would never pass editorial muster.”
To his credit, Wallace didn’t back down. He told Conway that it was “offensive” for a White House to think it could “lecture us about what we should and shouldn’t do.” Conway suggested that Wallace and his colleagues ought to “talk less and listen to America more.” She argued that the election represented a rejection of the establishment–and for that reason, there should be hell to pay.
“Who is cleaning house? Which one of the first network to get rid of these people who said things that just weren’t true?”
After whining about how the media harped on her infamous claim that the White House was trying to deliver “alternative facts” to the nation, she resumed her demand for heads to roll in newsrooms around the country.
“We have all the headlines, people should be embarrassed. Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go. They are on panels every Sunday. They’re on cable news every day.
Who’s the first editorial writer, where is the first blogger that will be left out that embarrassed his or her outlet? We know all their names. I’m too polite to call them out by name. But they know who they are, and they’re all wondering, will I be the first to go?
The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go. If this were a real business, if the mainstream media were a thriving private sector business that actually turned a profit, which is not true of many of our newspapers, Chris, 20 percent of the people would be gone. They embarrassed, they failed to protect their shareholders and their board members and their colleagues.”
This statement should make anyone who cares about our democracy cringe. A top White House adviser has effectively demanded that those critical of Trump during the election be fired. And given Conway’s closeness to Trump, it can only be assumed that she was speaking for the president. Combined with the president himself calling for one of his biggest critics to be sold, there can no longer be any doubt–Trump only views the First Amendment as something in his way.
For all of the whining on the fringe over the years about Obama being a dictator, unless I’m very wrong, I don’t recall anyone in the Obama White House intimidating journalists in this way. And yet, we now have two top White House advisers, and the president himself, engaging in what can only be described as a full-fledged effort to bludgeon the press into submission. After this, I don’t want to hear anything about Obama being a dictator ever again. After all, we now have a president who has all but announced he wants to be a dictator.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
