Trump’s Blueprint for Bending the Media Has Nixon Written All Over It
The New York Times
The president’s heavy-handed approach to traditional journalists has the hallmarks of an attempted crackdown 50 years ago.
Voters had delivered the president to the White House for a second term, disregarding news about arrests and indictments of former aides accused of breaking the law to help keep him in power. Now, the newly emboldened president and his top officials had a message for the reporters who covered it all so aggressively: It was payback time.
As senior officials blasted journalists as “arrogant elitists” out of touch with “real America,” the administration threatened the licenses of local TV stations carrying the major networks’ newscasts and moved to slash funding for the “liberal-slanted” PBS.
The president was not Donald J. Trump. He was Richard M. Nixon. The scandal he thought he had outrun, Watergate, would ultimately force his resignation. And his brazen anti-press moves, which initially appeared to cow journalists, would stall in an onslaught of revelations about his role in covering up wrongdoing in his West Wing.
That dark chapter in media history is suddenly relevant again, as the second administration of President Trump resorts to a heavy-handed approach to traditional journalists that has all the hallmarks of his predecessor’s attempted press crackdown some 50 years ago.
Mr. Trump and his aides have called reporters for major news outlets liars; falsely accused them of accepting government payoffs for favorable treatment of Democrats (a misrepresentation of agency spending on news subscriptions); and made a show of reducing their prominence in the White House and Pentagon briefing rooms while giving more space to friendlies from newer, right-wing alternatives.
Mr. Trump has coupled those largely symbolic and by now familiar moves with an attempt to use the levers of government against traditional journalists that goes well beyond his first-term attacks.
The trade deficit has long drawn the president’s ire. Now, he’s preparing to take it on again.
American companies intent on making goods in the United States are fretting over the impact of tariffs on their access to parts and raw materials.
A growing number of countries, including American allies, are striking trade deals as the Trump administration erects a higher fence around its global commerce.
The invoking of national security to unravel trade agreements could scramble the international trading system in China’s favor.
Canada, Mexico and China account for more than a third of the products brought into the United States. Tariffs could lead to higher prices for consumers.