As is well-known Trump's greatest tell is his compulsion to project. If he accuses an opponent of something it means he has done it himself--from the corruption he attributed to the Clinton Foundation (but was actually done by the Trump Foundation) to...
...concerns about protecting emails (when he uses an unsecured phone and hands over secrets in the Oval Office to enemies, etc.). But of all of these projections, one of the greatest concerns his obsession with Fake News.
His support has been built on the backing of media outfits like Fox News, Breitbart, the National Enquirer, and Alex Jones whose stock in trade is trafficking in lies, deception, unfounded conspiracy theories, bias and pathological partisanship.
The lack of ethics and journalistic standards of these organizations is so surpassing that in any other field of endeavor their distortions and efforts at deceiving the public would be subject to prosecution.
But, ironically, they are protected by the First Amendment that Trump so hates and so often seeks to undermine when it comes to the credible media sources and purveyors of truth he sees as his adversaries and who he paints as the "enemies of the people."
But with the National Enquirer case we enter a new realm. What are the consequences if a media company becomes complicit in a conspiracy to cover up facts, threaten opponents into silence and suppress information in order to effect an outcome in an election?
At the same time, the right is now suggesting that the media mega-forces of our time, the social media companies,should be obligated to carry the hate-speech and incitement to violence & lies of the far right even if they are destructive, damaging and not in the public interest.
The same people that feel a baker should have the right to deny service to a client who seeks a cake that is contrary to his or her values, feel that Twitter or Google should not have the same rights to deny service to people who endanger or deceive the public.
Meanwhile Trump and his aides seek to deny access to the public to information that falls well within their right to know while inciting their supporters to attack members of the press. This is not the inside baseball concern of journalists or the media.
This is a brewing crisis in American democracy in which the president and his supporters are challenging rights and values fundamental to the Founders while twisting and perverting those rights to promote propaganda, division and fraud.
These are complex issues but we ignore or minimize them at our peril. Truth has become an issue in American politics. One party supports it. One party is seeking to undermine it and negate its meaning altogether--as the words of operatives like Giuliani and Conway reveal.
If truth matters to you, if the Constitution matters, if democracy matters, vote for those who will stand up for them in November, donate to them, work for them. We are not entitled to a successful democracy. We must work for it daily.
