Trump's threat against the free press - read Masha Gessen's WARNING!

'The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism. There is no law that requires the presidential administration to hold daily briefings, none that guarantees media access to the White House. Many journalists may soon face a dilemma long familiar to those of us who have worked under autocracies: fall in line or forfeit access. There is no good solution (even if there is a right answer), for journalism is difficult and sometimes impossible without access to information.

(Note that this was written November 11, 2016 - and has come to pass!)

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/


President Trump intensified his threat against the press Wednesday afternoon, hours after threatening to use government power to penalize NBC, telling reporters that "it is frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write."

http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-pol-essential-washington-updates-trump-follows-up-nbc-threat-it-is-1507746214-htmlstory.html


In Mr. Trump’s case, it may just be an idle threat, the sort of bluster that he has regularly used to keep perceived adversaries off balance. Just a day earlier, he suggested using federal tax law to punish the National Football League as part of his campaign against players who kneel during the national anthem, only to have a spokeswoman later say he was just making a point.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/us/politics/trump-nbc-fcc-broadcast-license.html

Idle threat, my ass...






#1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions.

He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted “Lock her up!” They, and he, meant every word. If Trump does not go after Hillary Clinton on his first day in office, if he instead focuses, as his acceptance speech indicated he might, on the unifying project of investing in infrastructure (which, not coincidentally, would provide an instant opportunity to reward his cronies and himself), it will be foolish to breathe a sigh of relief. Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents.


http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/