Posted on 08/05/2018 11:11:18 AM PDT by Drango
"Enemy of the people" is an incendiary phrase. It's been uttered by some of history's most vicious thugs — Robespierre, Goebbels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao — to vilify their opponents ... who were often murdered.
President Trump must know that history by now when he calls the press "the enemy of the people." As he must also know the anti-Semitic and racist history of the America First slogan, by which the president describes many of his policies.
But Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, pointedly declined the chance this week to say, as Ivanka Tump did, "I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people."
We should be careful about calling President Trump's attacks on the press unprecedented. Abraham Lincoln shut down newspapers during the Civil War. President Wilson signed the Espionage Act that made it illegal to print, "any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States," which would put many Americans behind bars today for a tweet.
Richard Nixon had journalists on his enemies list. President Obama's Justice Department used Wilson's old Espionage Act to prosecute government whistleblowers.
But in this age of trolling, public profanity, and angry, frothing crowds who harass reporters at rallies and sputter coarse slogans, there is something menacing about a president of the United States who cheers on mobs and brands a free press, "the enemy of the people."
I am not starry-eyed about the news business — and it is a business. A lot of us got into journalism with a high-minded ambition to inform the American public. But I think a lot of us make it a living because it's gratifying and fun to try to find and tell stories, see history in the face, ask sharp, critical questions of people in power, and tell the stories of people who feel overlooked.
A free press is the fresh air you need to keep a democracy breathing.
But journalism, as this president, who became a media celebrity because of the New York tabloids should know, can be a contact sport. Civility and professionalism are welcome. But reporting is the profession of All The President's Men, not Mary Poppins. Its purpose is to find flaws, raise doubts, discover secrets and air differences.
If the president had called reporters nosy, cranky, contentious, or smart-alecky, many reporters would have laughed and agreed. But calling them — us — enemies of the people is the kind of curse made by tyrants.
bwahaha.. we hurt their widdle feelings, lol...
Of course it’s a menacing move! We really do mean you harm, after what you’ve done to us! Duh!
Look this month for POTUS to declassify ...
— 20 redacted pages of June 2017 FISA renewal
... and possibly ...
— 63 pages of emails and notes b/t Ohr & Steele
— FD-302 summaries of 12 FBI interviews w/ Ohr re Steele
... and watch Dems and media toadies become apoplectic
9:37 AM - Aug 5, 2018
There is simply no reason for there to be any taxpayer funding of the far left NPR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSAoitd1BTQ
Long, but worth it if you have the time. Candice Owens, whom I’ve never heard of before tonight.
The MSM is the Country’s greatest threat.
Now, GFO, NPR.
Yep - he calls Fake News the enemy - and Fake News resents it...hence NPR jumping on the bandwagon.
So I interpreted Trump's tweet as what Ivanka said.
But, thinking like Scott Adams, the controversy over what Ivanka said or didn't say worked in Trump's favor.
The controversy embedded the phrase "the press is the enemy of the people" into the public's subconscious.
Mission accomplished.
Why si NPR still on the air? Useless liberal Bull S&^T that no-one listens to anyway!
He has repeatedly pointed out that “Fake News” (the enemy of the people) does not include all of the Press.
FAKE News is the enemy, unfortunately for NPR they probably qualify based on this article.
Journalists being propagandists is a menacing move
This NPR jackass has it all backwards.
To advocate that Trump’s name-calling should be prohibited, is to advocate tyranny.
Trump’s name-calling is protected under the First Amendment, and would be protected even if it wasn’t true.
How is Trump calling the press the enemy of the American people any different than the press saying Trump behaves like a tyrant?
They are words. Free speech.
ANY speech should be protected, even sacrilege, even racist speech, even holocaust denying (I know, people will disagree with that one - but be careful - when you limit someone else’s speech, you ultimately limit your own).
There is really only one exception: threats of violence should be punished - but even that is not a limit on speech - it is a limit on the crime that is being threatened.
If a man threatens to kill someone, that is not just words - it’s a plan, a conspiracy.
Hey Scott Simon: I was an accredited reporter for many years and still do some freelance work. There was a time when much of the press/media was a “friend” of the people, despite a few reds and wackos in it.
Since Vietnam (where I was an accredited correspondent), the US mainstream (print, some radio, and much of TV/Cable) has turned not only to the Left, but the Far-Left. Key writers and talkers are often as hardcore a bunch of Marxists with a liberal cover as can be. Others are just batshit cracy and incompetent, but use the clamor of “they’re attacking the press” as a cover for it.
Read the letters to the editor of the Wash. Post for a week and if you don’t puke, then you’re the reason the president and tens of millions of Americans consider the media the enemy.
The sheer amount of Marxist/communist propaganda, disinformation, and tactics that I learned/studied over the decades is showing up in ever larger proportions to what is written, from economics, politics, the cultural/social sections, columnists, editorials and even in a few comic strips.
Good, sharp and funny satire is one thing. What I’m seeing is another - sheer leftist propaganda, hate and disinformation.
Even the Wash. Post has a few leftist writers who blame what is happening in sports on Trump. He didn’t start it - Comrade “Che” Kopernick did. And if those photos of him in communist/Che t-shirts are real, then I stand my ground. If they are fake, let’s expose it too.
If you don’t think that the mainstream media, aided and abetted by insane politicians and academics, isn’t off the rails, then you have no idea what “reality” is.
It is “John Kerry, the phony 3 Purple Hearts” egomaniac Senator; it is a fake Indian Elizabeth Warren; it is Sen. Bernie Sanders claiming to be fighting a war on behalf of the “poor” while he has three houses in Vermont (none of which he is sharing with the poor, recovering drug addicts, or Syrian refugees.
Adam Schiff is caught on tape trying to get information on Trump from a “Russian” (a prankster), all the while claiming that Trump is the one who is “colluding” with them.
In Schiff and Swalwell’s cases, “colluding rhymes with deluding”, which sums up their mental illnesses.
Hillary and her money laundering foundations and fake charities! Need I say more except that most of the MSM refuse to really investigate her and her operations, fail to question her integrity and honesty over the destruction of her emails, servers, computers, phones, etc., and her ties to the crooked DNC and the fake “Dossiergate” hoax of Steele.
I think you get my drift. I sure hope you do because if you don’t, then you are proving my point that you are NOT getting the truth, real news, only the FAKE stuff. That is the real danger to our country, aided and abetted by the media.
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