Trump targets an old enemy

Last week marked “an outrageous ramping
up” of President Trump’s attack on the press,
said Jane Merrick in CNN.com. A noticeably
testy Trump lashed out at three black
journalists, deriding one, a PBS reporter, for
a “racist”question when she asked if he had
emboldened white nationalists. Earlier in the
week, Trump accused CNN’s Jim Acosta of being
a “rude, terrible” person after Acosta pressed
him with questions about the Central American
migrant caravan—then followed up by revoking
Acosta’s White House pass. To justify the punishment,
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders
distributed a video of an intern reaching for
Acosta’s microphone, sped up to look as if Acosta
“karate-chopped” her arm. “Disseminating lies
and smears” against a journalist “evokes George
Orwell’s 1984.” Trump is threatening to bar
more reporters, said Erik Wemple in Washington
Post.com, including CNN contributor April
Ryan, whom he called a “loser.” This form of
censorship is a truly “authoritarian gesture.”
There are two beneficiaries of “the vicious cycle
of Trump fighting the press,” said Alexandra
DeSanctis in NationalReview.com: Trump and
the press. Acosta is delighted to be at the center
of attention, and journalists who’ve rushed to
his defense are eager to take up the cause of the
Resistance. Trump, meanwhile, will continue to
seek out clashes with self-righteous reporters,
which help the White House “bolster its narrative
of a hostile, disingenuous press corps.”
It won’t work for Acosta to turn himself into a
“self-important martyr,” said Bre Peyton in The
Federalist.com. His “badgering and sexist behavior”
were caught on tape, so “when Trump calls
him ‘fake news,’ it’s much easier now for the
American people to get behind the message.”
Trump was just sour over Democrats’ success in
the midterm elections, said Jack Shafer in Politico
.com. “Hungry to spend his fury on someone or
something,” he turned to a familiar punching
bag. Trump treats journalists “as if they were his
employees,” and he probably fires Acosta “daily
in his mind.” When it comes to the press pass,
however, the law is on Acosta’s side. A federal
judge in 1977 ruled that the Nixon administration
violated a reporter’s rights by barring him
from the White House. Now CNN has invoked
that precedent in a lawsuit demanding Acosta’s
credentials be reissued. Trump can bully and duck
reporters all he wants, but he “can’t fire CNN.”