A new message from your friends at People For the American Way.
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Friend,

Welcome to our weekly “Trumptastrophe” email series, that will serve to
remind us all of the destructive policies, decisions, and actions we
encountered during the Trump presidency and the threats that he and others
in the MAGA movement still pose – and to keep those moments clear in our
memory as we fight to defeat Republican extremists during the upcoming
elections.

This week’s recap focuses on former President Trump’s contempt for the
media and any journalists who are willing to challenge the lies and
propaganda he has promoted throughout the years:

On Oct 25, 2020, the CBS News program “60 Minutes” aired an interview
filmed a few days earlier that then-President Donald Trump had cut short
and walked out of, objecting to journalist Leslie Stahl’s “tough
questions.” Trump [ [link removed] ]bailed on a planned joint segment with Vice President
Mike Pence.

After stalking out, Trump tweeted his complaints about what he called “a
FAKE and BIASED interview.” He called it “terrible Election Intrusion” —
similar rhetoric to his claims about his more recent criminal indictments.
He then [ [link removed] ]released video of the full interview before “60 Minutes” aired,
bragging about his “magnificently brilliant” answers to Stahl’s questions.

Not long before, Trump had [ [link removed] ]made similar complaints about another
reporter, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, who “refused to let him just say things
that were untrue or filibuster on things he didn’t want to answer,” in the
words of journalist Christ Cillizza.

CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale identified [ [link removed] ]at least 16 false or
misleading claims made by Trump in the “60 Minutes” interview he cut
short, part of the [ [link removed] ]tsunami of lies Dale [ [link removed] ]documented during the Trump
presidency.

This episode reminds us that Trump is a threat to a core American
principle — freedom of the press:

* As Right Wing Watch [ [link removed] ]noted back in 2018, “Trump seems to be under
the impression that the media exists to provide positive coverage of
him, and that anything critical of him is ‘fake news’ that has no
right to exist.”
* Trump regularly expressed contempt for the media and aggressively
generated hostility toward journalists, specifically targeting media
outlets and reporters who called out his lies — or just failed to take
the fawning tone he believed he deserved. Trump whipped crowds at his
campaign rallies into an anti-journalism fervor, a practice that did
not end when he was elected. In 2018, he called the news media “[ [link removed] ]the
enemy of the American people.”
* Trump was virtually a 24/7 liar and propagandist who tried to
discredit critical media coverage by calling it “fake news,” fostering
a MAGA world mindset closed to any facts or analysis not aligned with
Trump’s. That mindset that makes the work of democracy – questioning,
compromise, governing – much harder.
* Trump has threatened freedom of the press in multiple ways. He has
called for [ [link removed] ]changing libel laws to make it easier to punish
journalists and silence news outlets over their coverage of public
officials.
* Just this month, Trump was back to complaining about “60 Minutes,”
griping that an interview with President Joe Biden about the
Israel-Hamas war “should be considered a campaign contribution for the
Democrat Party” and questioned why the network should “get free public
airwaves for this highly partisan ‘show’.” MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones
[ [link removed] ]noted, “It’s at least the second time in as many months that Trump
has suggested the federal government intervene with the free press by
stripping stations’ broadcast licenses.” Trump suggested in September
that Comcast, parent company to NBC News and MSNBC, be investigated
for treason, [ [link removed] ]adding, “I say up front, openly, and proudly, that
when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the
LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized.”
* Trump’s attacks on the media were not only a threat to freedom in the
United States; his relentless complaints about “fake news” have been
adopted by [ [link removed] ]authoritarian leaders as justification for [ [link removed] ]limiting
freedom of the press around the world.
* Meanwhile, the Trump White House [ [link removed] ]regularly [ [link removed] ]gave media
credentials to Rick Wiles’ TruNews, an aggressively antisemitic outlet
that [ [link removed] ]called for violence against “commies” in the United States. A
vast network of right-wing, [ [link removed] ]religious-right, and extreme far right
websites and media outlets functioned and continue to function as
[ [link removed] ]de facto public relations arms of Trump’s campaign, often
repeating his claims about mainstream media. In the early days of the
COVID-19 pandemic, conservative Christian broadcasters downplayed the
threat, [ [link removed] ]complaining that the “liberal media” functioned as
“evangelists of fear.” After Trump was defeated, many right-wing media
operations [ [link removed] ]promoted Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being
stolen.

These are just some of the reasons we need YOU in this
fight. So, find your
favorite way to unwind after reading through our brief recollection of
“this week in the Trump presidency,” and then make a plan for how you will
fight back THIS week, this MONTH, this election cycle.

[ [link removed] ]If you’d like to opt-out of this series but still continue receiving
our other email content, you can do so here >>

Thanks for all that you do to defeat Republican extremism.

– People For the American Way

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