Donald Trump’s principal opponent is, of course, Kamala Harris, but the former president targets independent news organizations with nearly the same vigor as the Democratic vice president. There are, however, some nuances to the Republican’s campaign against the free press, and it’s worth appreciating the differences.
Broadly speaking, Trump’s lines of attack fall into three categories. The first is name-calling: The former president, for example, has spent years referring to journalists as “the enemy of the people,” media outlets as “evil,” and news professionals as “scum.”
The second is more serious: The Republican hopes to use governmental power to crack down on journalism he dislikes. It’s precisely why Trump has invested so much time and energy, for example, talking about the FCC stripping news networks of their broadcast licenses for airing coverage he disapproves of. He’s filed all kinds of lawsuits against the media outlets, and targeted news organizations with FEC complaints.
We saw some abuses along these lines during his first term in the White House, and these tactics would almost certainly get worse in a second term.
But the third category is the most pernicious and most dangerous: Trump isn’t above talking about violence when going after the free press. NBC News reported on one of the GOP candidate’s final campaign events of the election cycle.
Speaking about the bulletproof glass positioned in front of his lectern, the former president said that for a bullet to hit him in an attempted assassination, a shooter would have to “shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much.”
His Pennsylvania audience apparently found this amusing.
Given the recent controversy surrounding Trump imagining former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney facing a firing squad, and the frequency with which he paints pictures of violence against his foes, it’s tempting to think the former president would exercise some caution in this area.
Evidently, he doesn’t want to.
I’m mindful of the fact most voters won’t choose a candidate based on how they intend to interact with media outlets and journalistic professionals, but for those concerned with the future of the First Amendment, it’s no small matter that Trump plans to crack down on the free press as part of a larger authoritarian-style agenda. As recently as three weeks ago, after condemning American news organizations as “corrupt,” the GOP candidate went so far as to say that he wants to “straighten out” the nation’s press in the near future.
No good can come of this.