“More Treacherous Than Nixon”: Sunday Shows Hammer Trump For Unhinged Attack On Media

“Trump’s attacks on the American press as enemies of the American people are more treacherous than Richard Nixon’s attacks on the press.”

Prominent journalists are eloquently responding to President Donald Trump’s unhinged attack on the media Friday, in which he declared five leading mainstream outlets “the enemy of the American people.”

From ABC News’ Jonathan Karl (video above): 

“I’ve reported in countries where leaders not only complain about a critical press, but also try to shut it down, throwing reporters in prison or worse. I’ve seen my colleagues risk their lives and, with increasing frequency, lose their lives in their pursuit of the truth. We are not about to stop doing our jobs because yet another president is unhappy with what he reads or hears or sees on TV news. There is a reason the founders put freedom of the press in the very first amendment to the Constitution.

“As long as American democracy remains healthy, there will be reporters willing to pursue the truth, even if that means incurring the wrath of the most powerful person in the world. A free press isn’t the enemy of America; it’s a big part of why makes America great.”

From Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace’s exchange with Reince Priebus: 

“Reince, here is the problem, I don’t have a problem with you complaining about an individual story. We sometimes get it wrong, you guys sometimes get it wrong. I don’t have any problem with you complaining about bias. But you went a lot further than that, or the president went a lot further. He said that the fake media, not certain stories, that the fake media are an enemy to the country. We don’t have a state-run media in this country, that’s what they have in dictatorships. … 

“You don’t get to tell us what to do, Reince. You don’t get to tell us what to do any more than Barack Obama did. Barack Obama whined about FOX News all the time but I gotta say he never said we were an enemy of the people. … 

“He [Obama] took the shots and we didn’t like them. And frankly we don’t like this either. But he never went as far as President Trump has, and that’s what’s concerning because it seems like he crosses a line when he says that we’re an enemy of the people. That’s concerning.”

From Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein: 

“Trump’s attacks on the American press as enemies of the American people are more treacherous than Richard Nixon’s attacks on the press. Nixon’s attacks on the press were largely in private. There’s a history of what enemy of the people, that phrase means, as used by dictators and authoritarians, including Stalin, including Hitler. And I’m not about to stay anything comparing Hitler and Trump, but it’s a demagogue’s statement. And we live in a time now where there is no civic consensus in this country, like there was at the time of Watergate, about acceptable presidential conduct. There was a consensus that Nixon had to leave office because he had breached that acceptable conduct. … So Trump is out there on his own leading a demagogic attack on the institutions of free democracy, including the press.” 

And from CNN’s Brian Stelter: 

“Poison. That’s what it is. It’s a verbal form of poison meant to affect your view of the media world, meant to harm news organizations. Notice what Trump was doing with this tweet — this now famous tweet from Friday, you saw it. It says, ‘the fake news media, failing New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people.’ He was singling out specific news outlets as enemies, including this one. He wasn’t talking about the entire press. He was talking about those five. And he wasn’t saying they are his enemy but your enemy, maybe trying to drive another wedge between the sources he likes and the sources he dislikes. Maybe he was also just trying to distract us.”