Early in his first term, President Trump said that because he thought CNN and MSNBC were too critical of him, that meant “they’re illegal, what they do is illegal.”
Though it would be hard to think of an idea more antithetical to the Constitution and the entire American project than It should be against the law to criticize the president, he has never let it go. Last September, he said that news coverage is overwhelmingly “against me,” adding, “They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad. See, I think that’s really illegal.”
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com
Trump: "When you have networks where I won an election in counties -- I guess it's 2,600 to 525, that's called a landslide times two -- when you have that kind of popularity or voter support, and yet 97% of the newscasts are against me ... I think that's really illegal."
It was easy to dismiss those statements as the predictable whining of a toddler. But a year into his presidency, Trump’s Justice Department is moving to make it a reality, or at the very least to make members of the media worry that if they’re too critical, the criminal justice system might be deployed against them.
The first target is Don Lemon, who as a former CNN anchor has a high enough profile that making an example of him will send a powerful signal to others who criticize the administration. But it goes beyond the media. This is better understood as piece of a broader strategy to intimidate the entire country into submission.
Two weeks ago, a small group of protesters disrupted Sunday services at a church in St. Paul where a high-ranking local ICE official is a pastor. Accompanying the group were two reporters, Lemon and Georgia Fort, a longtime Minnesota-based journalist.
The administration clearly saw it as an opportunity to highlight crazy lefties attacking oppressed Christians. “Demonic and godless behavior and also appears facially illegal,” tweeted Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
So DOJ swung into action, moving to file federal criminal charges against not only the protesters but Lemon and Fort as well. Because this is an administration that lives to produce content, the White House posted an AI-altered photo of one of the protesters being arrested; the false image showed her crying (she hadn’t) and darkened her skin.
