Every week is a cliffhanger in this new Trump reality show, so what did we see in this week’s episode? Amid the drama and the farce, we saw the shape of an enormous battle to come.
We were told that the news media has endangered the American people by intentionally covering up terrorist acts: “The very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that.”
We were told that judges reviewing Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban have “put our country in such peril. If something happens, blame … the court system. People pouring in. Bad!”
And we were told what the outcome will be from all of this: journalists and judges — not the president and his men — will have blood on their hands if terrorists attack.
That was what the 45th president of the United States tried to sell Americans this week. He must have been shocked at the depth of the resistance.
Trump knows that America needs to transform into the land of the “Big Lie” for him to accomplish his goals. Creating an authoritarian country in his image is only possible if the independent institutions that potentially stand in his way are fatally compromised.
Historically, these institutions are what separate modern democracies from authoritarian regimes. They protect societies from the fever of political excess. This is why they cannot be tolerated in Trump’s America.
We have already seen how Trump works. During the presidential campaign, he destroyed his political rivals by demeaning and belittling them: Crooked Hillary, Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, Low Energy Jeb and the like.
Trump pursued the same approach this week when he took on journalists and judges with lies and threats. But, significantly, these institutions fought back.
The judges responded to Trump’s insults in subtle ways. The judges from the several states who dealt with challenges to Trump’s travel ban were obviously silent — except in the work they did. But many members of the legal community protested on their behalf.
They received surprising public support on Wednesday from Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Gorsuch described the president’s attacks on judges as “demoralizing” and “disheartening” in a meeting with a U.S. senator.
Trump’s attack on the news media generated a more explosive reaction. On Monday, Trump had suggested that journalists were intentionally covering up reports of terrorist attacks: “You’ve seen what happened in Paris, and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening. It’s gotten to the point where it’s not even being reported.”
Within hours of those remarks, several news organizations worked to prove that Trump was lying. They put together lists of the various terrorist incidents that have occurred in recent months, with details of the extensive media coverage they received.
Trump and his team regard journalists as their “major opposition” and are frantic to get them under control. There is more than a little irony in this, since it was the endless, uncritical broadcast coverage of Trump’s early primary race that pushed him so far ahead of his rivals.
Since Trump’s election, and led by newspapers such as The New York Times and Washington Post, the coverage has toughened up. The falsehoods and distortions uttered by Trump and his senior officials have particularly inflamed journalists and have been challenged — resulting in a growing prominence of “fact-checkers” and investigative reporting.
But in the face of the Trump onslaught, American journalism is vulnerable. There is growing public distrust of traditional news outlets and an explosion of new information sources. Many newsrooms are suffering budget cuts even though some of their corporate bosses — such as cable news channels — are experiencing record profits due to the Trump phenomenon.
Television, in particular, has seen a growing emphasis on soft news and cheap punditry at the expense of rigorous, fact-based newsgathering and investigation. Foreign bureaus, for example, are becoming extinct. Is there any wonder why so many Americans “distrust” so much of America’s news media?
The last time American journalism was regarded highly by Americans was in the 1970s. That was when the “Pentagon Papers” revealing U.S. government lies about the Vietnam War were leaked and when meticulous investigative reporting broke open Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal.
Those events led to a resurgence in high-quality U.S. journalism. Somewhat ironically, given the current president’s agenda, will the Trump era accomplish the same feat?
Let’s not delude ourselves: the stakes in this reality show are incalculable.
Tony Burman is former head of Al Jazeera English and CBC News. Reach him @TonyBurman or at tony.burman@gmail.com .
Tony Burman is former head of Al Jazeera English and CBC News. Reach him @TonyBurman or at tony.burman@gmail.com .
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