Trump's Relentless and Dangerous War on the Press

[Content Note: Threats of violence.]

Earlier this month, after hundreds of news organizations published editorials criticizing Donald Trump's attacks on the free press, Trump tweeted a bunch of bullshit about it, singling out the Boston Globe, whose editorial board spearheaded the collective pushback.

Robert Chain, 68, then made dozens of threatening calls to the Globe's office, including making a bomb threat. Borrowing Trump's language, he warned, "You're the enemy of the people, and we're going to kill every one of you."

Chain has now been arrested and charged.

"A man was charged on Thursday with threatening to kill employees of the Boston Globe following the paper's decision to coordinate a national response to Donald Trump's attacks on the media, according to a release issued by the Justice Department." https://t.co/Tv29E4doK6

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) August 30, 2018

This morning, Trump went on another Twitter rant in which he launched a fresh round of attacks on the free press. One of those tweets reads: "I just cannot state strongly enough how totally dishonest much of the Media is. Truth doesn’t matter to them, they only have their hatred & agenda. This includes fake books, which come out about me all the time, always anonymous sources, and are pure fiction. Enemy of the People!"

In July, I wrote a piece about the Trump Regime's reliance on stochastic terrorism: Leverage visibility and influence to dehumanize your enemies and cast them as threats, then sit back and wait for your most radical and/or unstable supporters to take violent action.

I noted that Trump would continue to disseminate "toxic bile from his Twitter account [and] let his base handle it."

He is relentless. And he is very dangerous.