The Free Press

 "You may be going to jail," my husband said the other day after reading my latest blog.

"You think???" I said, laughing.

"Of course, since you are admonishing the man who would be king/dictator."

I laughed again, knowing my blogs, soon to be posted on substack, are small potatoes. However, the non-laughing matter is he will surely go after the big presses. Freedom of the press may be a thing of the past. It was bad during the first term, but this term will be arguably worse. In his first term he went after CNN because of its coverage about him, and apparently tried to push The Department of Justice to block AT& T's acquisition of the Network's owner at the time, Time Warner. He has frequently ranted and rallied against the press, calling them "the enemy of the people." Since he is a media creation, this feels ridiculously ironic; they have given him too large a platform, freqently pushing his lies as facts.They have normalized an insanely abnormal man, a terrific injustice to the American public who believe him.

This second term will be worse. According to a piece in THE NEW YORKER, "there is a fear he will ramp up the deployment of subpoenas, specious lawsuits, court orders and search warrants to seize reporters' notes, devices and source materials." The threats are so large that THE WASHINGTON POST and THE L.A. TIMES refused to endorse Kamala, their candidate of choice. Joe and Mika went down to Mar-a-Lago to try to reconcile with him. Afterwards, he made fun of them for trying to get back in his favor. It is a terrible move to try to gain favor with a man who is so unhinged, so newspapers and media, beware of your kow-towing. Stop bowing down to him; it won't work!

Indeed, retribution is in the air. Trump has already opposed a bi-partisan federal bill that would allow journalists to withold the identity of confidential sources. "Republicans must kill this bill," he has said. Already Kash Patel, a Q conspiracy theorist and potential F.B.I director, has said, "We are going after American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections," while on Steve Bannon's podcast. Trump's lawyers have already threatened or taken legal action against THE TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, ABC, Penguin Random House, and others. With one of the authors of 2025 (the 900 page document Trump knew nothing about), Brendan Carr, who is ideologically aligned with Elon Musk, to head the Federal Communications Commission, freedom of press may soon be obsolete.  Indeed, the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 proposed ending federal funding for both NPR and PBS.

We are now like Putin's Russia. Another irony is just the other day, Russian television mocked America's chaos and disarray, clearly happy to have Trump and his chaos in office. It will only make Russia stronger as American power weakens. This is, after all, "the arsenal of a would-be-autocrat who seeks to intimidate his critics, protect himself from scrutiny and go on wearing away at the liberal democratic order." He desires the silence of the opposition, which is why it is critical for people to raise their voices of dissent high over the rooftops of every building, all over the world! And so I will.

*Acnowledgment is given to "The Talk of the Town," NEW YORKER, December 9th