Offending the Would-Be King: A Wrecking Ball to Freedom
The Washington Post tells us that the number of jailed journalists around the world is at a record high.
Some of the worst offenders have leaders affiliated, visibly or not, with Donald Trump – a man who can’t get through a day without damning the 5th estate as liars and deceivers, and who has been on record complaining that it should be easier to sue or otherwise punish journalists and publishers whose take on the news offends the would-be king.
Making such threats and filing such frivolous suits is indeed a hallmark of his corpulence and other dictators de facto and wannabe.
Suppression of the press and of dissent of course, was a strong motivator for the American Revolution and is still a definitive marker for all authoritarian and dictatorial regimes.
Of course Trump has a long way to go to match his hero. Putin murders dissidents, you know, ( and Trump has shrugged when reminded of that) but it’s spreading in the GOP, now rightly terrified of what’s going to happen later this year and desperately trying to deflect, distract, intimidate and deny the coming flood until they can get the power to insulate themselves from consequences.
At least one Senator has written a “cease and desist” letter to a constituent whose byline appears on Mad Mike’s America in open defiance of the constitution.
Will this Nixonian crusade proliferate or will it drown in a sea of convictions for conflict of interest, money laundering, influence peddling, witness tampering and the sale of Federal policy to foreign adversaries in exchange for contraband?
Certainly if we do not rid ourselves of the party in power, they will continue to take the wrecking ball to freedom of the press and to the independence and power of the courts and the Justice Department.
Hopefully Trump will push the wrong button and his base will turn on him. I really believe he is one lie away from impeachment or a constitutional crisis.
I bloody hope he doesn’t press the wrong button!! 😜
He’s still getting that publicity, but not what he wants. They aren’t worshipping him in the 5th Estate which is why he’s so dedicated to doing what he can to tear them down.
The now heavily criticized main stream media, gave Trump so much air time and column inches when he was candidate Trump, he didn’t need to buy many self promoting ads. Trump loved it. Couldn’t last, now hell hath no fury like a narsasitic, egomaniac scorned.