The White House has just promised to slam the news media into submission.
In the person of Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Trump, the White House stated publicly that they plan to keep on accusing the media of producing “fake news.”
Gorka is a Hungarian born political scientist with expertise in antiterrorism and counterterrorism. In spite of his significant security background, however, Gorka has been speaking about the President’s terrible relations with the press.
While appearing with conservative radio host Michael Medved, Gorka said that there is a concerted effort on the part of the media to make his boss look bad. Poor President Tenderheart just can’t stand it.
Gorka understands how fake news works, and understands how powerful it can be to keep repeating lies about your perceived enemies. That’s because he works for Breitbart News, the white nationalist website lead by Steve Bannon.
As one of Trump’s inside circle and a confidant of the real President, Steve Bannon, Gorka took to the airwaves to attack the press. He said:
“There is a monumental desire on behalf of the majority of the media, not just the pollsters, the majority of the media to attack a duly elected President in the second week of his term.”
As if “the media” is a unified group who regularly consult with each other. As if they are not in constant competition.
It’s clear that the current administration, lead by Bannon and Gorka and other far right extremists, intends to undercut the legitimacy of our national media. Gorka made it clear:
“That’s how unhealthy the situation is and until the media understands how wrong that attitude is, and how it hurts their credibility, we are going to continue to say, ‘fake news.’ I’m sorry, Michael. That’s the reality.”
To be absolutely clear, the Trump team will continue to claim “fake news” for every report that displeases them. Gorka made no effort to claim that the information reported is actually incorrect; he says that they’ll call it “fake” if it’s not what they want to hear.
That’s how dictators work. It is undemocratic, dishonest and incredibly dangerous.
Featured image by 7th Army Training Command via Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)
