Tyrants
don’t allow open questioning, and they hate the free press.
They want total control. That’s why Trump’s so-called “news conference”
on December 11 – the first he’s held in six months – wasn’t really a
news conference at all.
Consider:
1.
Trump refused to answer questions from reporters who have run
stories he doesn’t like, or from news outlets that have criticized him. This
is a blatant attempt to control the news media by making them reluctant
to run negatives stories about Trump for fear they’ll be frozen out.
2.
He loaded the audience with paid staffers who cheered his statements
and jeered at reporters. Never before has a president-elect or
president held a news conference larded with paid staffers, designed to
give the impression that the media are divided between those who support
him and those who criticize him.
3.
He continued calling the media “dishonest.” This is part of Trump’s continuing effort to discredit the press and to reduce public confidence in it.
4.
He condemned individual news outlets. Trump criticized CNN for dispensing “fake news,” called Buzzfeed “a
pile of garbage,” and sarcastically called the BBC “another beauty.”
5.
He repeatedly lied, and the media in attendance weren’t allowed to
question him on his lies. A sampling of Trump lies from his “news conference”:
(1) “It’s very familiar territory, news
conferences, because we used to give them on an almost daily basis.” Wrong. His last news conference was July 27.
(2)
Trump claimed credit for Chrysler and Ford
announcing more production in the U.S. Wrong. Sergio Marchionne, the Fiat Chrysler
chief executive,
said Chrysler’s plan had been in the works for more than a year and had nothing to do with
Trump. Marchionne credited the decision to talks with the United Auto Workers.
Analysts
say
Ford’s decision to expand in Michigan rather than in Mexico had mostly to do
with the company’s long-term plans to invest in electric vehicles. It’s easier
for companies to find highly skilled workers to build new products, such as
electric cars, in the United States than in Mexico.
(3) “When we lost 22 million names and everything
else that was hacked recently, [the press] didn’t make a big deal out of that.” Wrong. The Chinese hack of 22 million accounts
at the Office of Personnel Management was
front-page news.
(4) “The Democratic National Committee was totally
open to be hacked. They did a very poor job. … And they tried to hack the
Republican National Committee, and they were unable to break through.” Wrong. FBI Director James B. Comey
said there was evidence that Republican National Committee domains were also targeted
but none of the information that may have been obtained was leaked. Comey said
that the Russians “got far deeper and wider into the [DNC] than the RNC,”
adding that “similar techniques were used in both cases.”
(5)
“I have no deals that could happen in Russia,
because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia.” Wrong. Trump repeatedly sought deals in
Russia. In a 2008 speech, Donald Trump Jr. said “Russians make up a pretty
disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” and “we see a lot of
money pouring in from Russia.”
In short, Trump’s first news
conference as president-elect – his first news conference in six months
– wasn’t a “news conference” at all, and
shouldn’t be called one.
It’s another example of Trump’s attempt to control the media. Trump isn’t even president yet, but he’s
already eroding our democracy.