Trump is not a threat to a free press

David Freddoso:
...
... when I see Trump rail against judges and journalists, I don't panic. I shrug.
...
Is he a threat to the republic? No. Not even a little bit. For the moment, at least, the FEC remains a greater threat to press freedom than our over-the-top commentator-in-chief, because three of its commissioners have actually tried to punish journalists for the content of their presidential debate coverage.

Others have pointed out, correctly, that tyrants rail against independent journalists just as Trump does. But tyrants don't earn the title by doing anything so trivial. Tyrants expel journalists from their countries in retaliation for negative coverage. They blackmail and extort journalists. They assassinate journalists. They wiretap journalists. They have them arrested on trumped up charges that are seemingly unrelated to their journalism.
What Trump has done is change the rules of the game, without attempting to use the heavy hand of government to actually attack the media.  Instead of absorbing blows stoically as many Presidents have done in the past, Trump responds in kind by attacking the attacker verbally.

He is sometimes over the top and is also sometimes as misinformed as the media he claims is being unfair, but he is not sending hitmen to take out reporters he does not like and he is not seizing control of the printing presses and media outlets.  He is just lambasting reporters in much the same way they lambaste him.

In the process, he has shown that those in the media to be as hypersensitive as he is.  And Trump's base likes the fact that he is fighting back against the real opposition.

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