No, that phrase isn't 100% true. Trump didn't wage war on Brietbart, OAN, and the like. Only "mainstream media" like CNN and even Fox when they reported what he called "fake news," actually facts he didn't like.
> During the BLM protests, there were hundreds of assaults and detentions of members of the press, along with an enhanced surveillance apparatus. That these actions didn't go through the strictest official channels doesn't mean that they didn't happen.
Trump's commentary on the violence against the press: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/19/media/trump-velshi-msnbc-shot...
I agree that local police assaulting journalists is awful, they should be fired and prosecuted. And I'm aware that Trump made some dumb ass comments praising that shit, but it doesn't constitute a war on the press. You're talking about some isolated disparate instances perpetrated by unrelated local police departments during a summer of protests and riots. That isn't an act of the executive branch of the federal government. The US doesn't have a strong presidential system like say for example France. The us president has virtually 0 control over any individual police departments other than threatening to yank some drug war funding.
There do exist levers the executive branch could pull to attack the press, e.g. via the FCC or by having the DOJ prosecute sources. The Trump admin didn't do those things despite all of his bluster. He basically ended the policy of aggressively prosecuting leakers and spent all day engaging with the media. Sure he's a shit bag who did crimes, but the war on the press stuff is overblown.
> The Trump admin didn't do those things despite all of his bluster.
Yes, it's an administrative motte & bailey. Police support, individual and organizational, for Trump is incredibly high and their loyalty to him transcends official channels. He's explicitly endorsed violence against journalists, brutality towards suspects, and celebrated the execution of Michael Reinoehl. While he didn't have direct control over the state police, he spoke directly to them frequently, and encouraged all of this.
Again, encouraging bad actors is 100% different from using the full power of the executive branch to persecute journalists which he did not do, and Russia does.
That doesn't really mean anything on the ground. The situation in the US is 100% different. Some dumb-ass president can love authoritarian shit all they want, but don't have a ton of actual power to lock up journalists. Russia just today shut down its last non-government owned TV station. That just can't happen in the US legally, and the courts are quite protective of speech and property here. The Trump years saw numerous cases of supposedly friendly judges telling him to fuck off. And the few avenues he did have to legally attack journalists, like prosecuting their sources, he didn't use unlike the previous administration.
Frankly he's just a stupid demagogue, and a symptom of the erosion of trust in institutions. But he didn't wage war on the press. THere's no evidence to support that outside of his bluster. He belongs in jail, but not for this.
It's also not true at all. There was no war on any journalists. I'm not aware of a single journalist jailed by the Trump DOJ, the FCC didn't yank any licenses, nothing. It was all talk.
During the BLM protests, there were hundreds of assaults and detentions of members of the press, along with an enhanced surveillance apparatus. That these actions didn't go through the strictest official channels doesn't mean that they didn't happen.
This seems to be largely about your definition of war. No elections were overturned, but could you say he waged war on elections? He had his team out there saying that Hugo Chavez created the rigged voting machines and that it was statistically impossible for Biden to have won. It was an ideological war, not a physical war. You don't have to jail anyone to nonetheless do broad damage to an institution. I agree that people can over-analyze sloppy comments from fringe weirdo politicians, but here is something the president tweeted:
>“They can’t stand the fact that this Administration has done more than virtually any other Administration in its first 2yrs,” he continued. “They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
Being a shit-bag and. a bully just isn't a "war". Arguably the controversy saved most of the legacy media landscape from financial ruin and gave them 4 more years to adjust to some new revenue models, the NYT in particular seems to have figured out how to pivot to a profitable online subscriber model that works. It wasn't clear in mid 2016 that they would be able to do that.
You can make a good case that the guy damaged the discourse and eroded trust in institutions, but news and journalism have flourished in recent years.
I agree that local police assaulting journalists is awful, they should be fired and prosecuted. And I'm aware that Trump made some dumb ass comments praising that shit, but it doesn't constitute a war on the press. You're talking about some isolated disparate instances perpetrated by unrelated local police departments during a summer of protests and riots. That isn't an act of the executive branch of the federal government. The US doesn't have a strong presidential system like say for example France. The us president has virtually 0 control over any individual police departments other than threatening to yank some drug war funding.
There do exist levers the executive branch could pull to attack the press, e.g. via the FCC or by having the DOJ prosecute sources. The Trump admin didn't do those things despite all of his bluster. He basically ended the policy of aggressively prosecuting leakers and spent all day engaging with the media. Sure he's a shit bag who did crimes, but the war on the press stuff is overblown.