Why are Trump's constant attacks on an independent press so dangerous?



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President Donald Trump and his allies tell the public almost daily not to believe in real reports. But the frequency and predictability of attacks does not make them less damaging. On the contrary: tweets full of lies and televised tirades are slowly eroding the common sense of American reality.

Monday was a great example. Trump shared 22 posts on Twitter before noon. Between his quotes from Fox News and his retweets on Hurricane Dorian, he blasted the Washington Post and spread misinformation about the workings of major newsrooms.
He also shared a key line of his re-election book, claiming that "our main opponent is the Fake News Media", not the Democrats.
Some of Trump's comments on the media are legitimate criticisms, but they are largely misleading. At the base of all this, there is a lie: That the legitimate media is "wrong".

When he says that reporters regularly invent sources from nothing, for example, he has no evidence of the charge. He misunderstands how the press works or deliberately misleads people. He has been saying this for years, and it has been corrected for years, so the latter is more likely.

Monday's insults were typical: Trump said "they write what they want, rarely have sources (even if they say it), no longer check the facts and only look for" murder "" .

As for the verification of the facts, the White House press office receives daily requests from journalists to verify the facts. The press office sometimes responds and other times refuses to comment.

Trump continued: "They take good news and make it bad, they are now beyond Fake, they are corrupt … The good news is that we are winning … Our real opponent is not the Democrats, nor the number of Republicans who lost Fake News Media is our main opponent.They have never been so bad in the history of our country! "

In other words, another day for Trump – a new explosion in an institution inscribed in the Constitution for the government to remain honest. Previous presidents have mostly tolerated an independent press at home and have proudly championed it as a truly American ideal abroad.

The tweets may have been motivated by a story published Monday in the Post, titled "The Lost Trump: The Aids Claim Victory, But Others See the Incompetence and the L & # 39; 39; intolerance ". The story reported includes several sources of recording.

Trump tweeted Monday morning about a passage in the story regarding his "racist attack" against Democratic lawmakers dubbed "the squad". He denied the racist nature of his tweets and claimed that "they had launched racist attacks against our nation".

From there, he launched his broader anti-media message.

In recent days, he has been interested in various points of sale, from Axios to CNN, from Fox to the post office.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, also a CNN political analyst, tweeted a comment that a Trump advisor had shared with her a few weeks ago: "That the President, whose approval ratings have remained upside down , needs voters to feel negatively about its opponents, but about long-standing institutions. "

Mark Follman, National Affairs Officer at Mother Jones, said last week that "Trump's incessant war against the American press has become even more extreme as his presidency continues."

And he noted the power: Although tactics "represent an inherently dangerous attack on a pillar of our constitutional democracy, Trump's multi-year campaign against the press does not appear to have been a more successful project than, for example, Trump Tower Moscow. . "

The president sometimes relies on ethical failings to support his case – a form of dispute based on an anecdote that is certainly compelling for his fans but is not factual.

For example, last week, Trump summoned Lawrence O Donnell, of MSNBC, for a television segment that was carefree of his finances. O Donnell quoted a non-named unique source and did not follow the network validation process – and he was widely criticized for his misstep. After a legal threat from one of Trump's lawyers, O Donnell apologized for this claim and retracted it. The episode was embarrassing for MSNBC.
Trump does not seem to register the same embarrassment when he speaks badly. For a news anchorman, skids related to an emergency situation such as Hurricane Dorian are a big problem. But Trump has repeatedly made erroneous statements about Dorian without any apparent follow-up or correction.

Sunday afternoon, for example, while rightly urging East Coast residents to take storm warnings seriously, he mistakenly invoked another state that was not really on the way to the storm.

"And, I would say, the states – and that could be a great little place: it's called Alabama," Trump told the camera at FEMA headquarters. "And Alabama could even have at least some very strong winds and something more, that could be, that was just raised, unfortunately."

"Alabama, just be careful, please, too," he added.

Earlier in the day, he also included Alabama in a tweet about threatened states. Local meteorologists quickly corrected it without result. The same has been true for the Birmingham National Meteorological Bureau, which is part of the executive branch of the government.

"Alabama will see no impact of #Dorian," tweeted the NWS Birmingham office. "We repeat, no impact of the #Dorian hurricane will be felt across Alabama.The system will remain too much to the east."

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