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 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 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 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 at least 16 false or misleading claims made by Trump in the “60 Minutes” interview he cut short, part of the tsunami of lies Dale 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 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 “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 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 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, 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 authoritarian leaders as justification for limiting freedom of the press around the world.
- Meanwhile, the Trump White House regularly gave media credentials to Rick Wiles’ TruNews, an aggressively antisemitic outlet that called for violence against “commies” in the United States. A vast network of right-wing, religious-right, and extreme far right websites and media outlets functioned and continue to function as 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, complaining that the “liberal media” functioned as “evangelists of fear.” After Trump was defeated, many right-wing media operations 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.
Thanks for all that you do to defeat Republican extremism.
– People For the American Way
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