It’s Thursday, and that means today is the day that more than a hundred newspapers will be going to ink with editorial pages dedicated to Donald Trump’s attacks on the free press. We at DC Tribune told you at the beginning of the week that the Boston Globe started a movement which called out to other newspapers to join them in penning op-eds on the fact that Trump has made attacking the press a lynchpin in his war against what he calls “fake news,” but which actually looks a lot like accurate and timely reporting.
Now those pieces are beginning to roll out, and Trump, as predicted, is in the midst of a tweetstorm that serves literally no purpose except to let America know he can’t stop reading all the bad things about himself and going a little crazier with each one.
But there’s one article that has to be driving the President possibly a little more mad than the rest, and that’s because it comes from one of the very few newspapers in America that endorsed him for the presidency, the Topeka Capital-Journal.
In the run-up to the 2016 election, the CJ called Trump “the wisest choice to lead our nation.” It’s not clear how a newsroom full of editors could have come to that conclusion, since even at the time, Trump was already running on a platform of lies, racist overtones, and even a budding distaste for media outlets that didn’t favor him.
But whether the Journal saw it coming or not, they’re clear-eyed now:
Our current president attacks hard. He’s proud of it. He holds nothing back, he says, in going against those who threaten him. That worked at one point as a New York real estate developer. But as leader of this country, the public looks at those words differently. For some, that speech becomes so much gospel, a guide to understanding the world.
So if the press is the ‘enemy of the people,’ how do members of the public act?
Do they catcall and threaten journalists? It’s already happened.
Do they support closing news outlets that criticize the president? A recent poll suggests that many do.
Do they take up arms?
Where does this trail of incendiary rhetoric lead?”
The Capital-Journal is only one of the scores of newspapers who will come for Donald Trump today in their editorial pages. But they hit the nail right on the head: Trump’s attacks on the press are dangerous, and they must stop now.
Featured image via screen capture
