Opinion: Trump Is Open About His Plans To Control The Media. Why Isn’t The Press Fighting Back?

It has taken Donald Trump talking about the size of the late Arnold Palmer’s penis at a rally and his former White House chief of staff revealing in a new interview that the former president openly and routinely professed a fondness for the regime of Adolf Hitler, but finally more mainstream outlets are starting to correctly cover him as an aging bigot in decline.
It is a welcomed departure from what the most prominent political media outlets have largely been doing in their narrative of Trump’s verbal fumbles in recent weeks and months.
It’s been branded “sanewashing,” and this sanewashing goes so far that some in the political press not only posit that Trump remains consistently cogent despite multiple instances suggesting the contrary but also that he’s proving sharper than his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, on the presidential campaign trail.
That’s what The New York Times’ Jeremy Peters recently argued. With full acknowledgment that everyone has the right to their punditry, even if one does not share Harris’ fondness for repetition in her interviews, I am depressed by the reality that people holding such lofty positions harbor such low standards. (Well, for those that look like Donald Trump at least.)
On Monday, Politico’s Adam Wren declared that “Trump won the day because he showed his trademark capacity to entertain — and drive headlines — on the campaign trail.”
It’s this kind of reporting and commentary that makes me all the more inclined to agree with the critique that those in the press who engage in these antics are damaging public life and are no better are those helping Trump and his allies in other ways.
CNN should know better than to amplify and lend legitimacy to right-wing smear campaigns targeting Harris. The same goes for paying Scott Jennings to lie for Trump while he auditions to be his potential White House press secretary. No matter how much they try to play footsie with Trump and his cult, they will never love any of y’all back.
Instead of a “thank you for your contribution to my campaign,” Trump is responding to their graciousness with new complaints based on conspiracy theories followed by menacing threats to penalize various news organizations in a second term.
Trump has been on a tirade against CBS after he backed out of a scheduled ”60 Minutes” interview over a dispute about being fact-checked.
Following the airing of the episode, which still featured Harris and included a note about Trump’s absence, Trump accused CBS News of editing its interview to benefit Harris.
CBS News has rejected these claims ― because they’re made up ― but that hasn’t stopped Trump from threatening the network. At a recent rally, he said, “’60 Minutes,′ CBS… They ought to lose their license. They ought to take it off the air.”
“They are being sued by a lot of people,” Trump added. “They should lose their license. The fake news is protected. They took her answer, threw it out and gave her a new answer. Can you imagine if that happened to me?”
CBS may be his main target as of late, but as others have noted, he has plenty of media beef.
As Brian Stelter wrote for CNN, Trump “repeatedly accused ABC of wrongdoing after he was fact-checked during a presidential debate with Harris, floating ‘they ought to take away their license’ as punishment. Earlier in the year, he said of NBC and CNN, ‘They should have their licenses or whatever they have taken away.’”
Stelter is right to call for more news outlets to draw attention to these threats, but I’m not sure how many will heed the call.
As Trump huffs and puffs at the press over bullshit, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is already trying to use the powers of the state to strong-arm the media into acquiescing to his demands.
There is new evidence that DeSantis directed his office to write letters telling local TV stations they’d be criminally charged if they didn’t stop running ads for Amendment 4, a ballot measure designed to restore abortion rights with a state constitutional amendment.
These are authoritarian practices that warrant widespread coverage and outrage. To the credit of Jessica Rosenworcel, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, she promptly denounced Trump’s initial threats against CBS.
In a statement, Rosenworcel emphasized that the FCC “does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage.”
“While repeated attacks against broadcast stations by the former President may now be familiar, these threats against free speech are serious and should not be ignored,” Rosenworcel wrote. “As I’ve said before, the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy.”
Strong defense notwithstanding, Trump and his supporters have long forged plans to dramatically expand executive power, and that includes a reimagining of the FCC and what it can do.
Of all the dangers posed by a second Trump term, the media hasn’t done a good enough job of reporting the truth about Trump and his mental acuity, and it’s not fighting for its survival.
One presumes many in the upper echelons of the media believe they will be fine either way no matter who wins the election. Perhaps that might be the case for most for a while.
Even so, the leaders Trump admires most ― men like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin ― have strangled the media into submission in their countries.
And, to be honest, Trump governed more like a dictator during his first term than was often reflected in the coverage of the Trump administration. I firmly believe if Trump had governed similarly in a non-Western country, it would have been reflected in the papers most of us read in America.
It’s time for the press to play catch-up and call it out before it’s too late.
That is, if it’s not too late already.