My Open Letter to President Trump
President Donald J. Trump
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW,
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
A majority of Republicans agree with your charge that the news media is “the enemy of the American people,” according to a poll released by Quinnipiac University. The freedom of the press, protected by the First Amendment, is critical to a democracy in which the government is accountable to the people.
Free media functions as a watchdog that can investigate and report on government wrongdoing. Mr. President your attacks on the media have taken their toll, Journalists are denounced at political rallies, trolled on social media, and subjected to racist and misogynistic taunts. Such assaults, together with the unforgiving financial climate in which they operate, have made journalists feel under siege like never before. Mr. President, I beseech to stop your attacks on the media. They are harming our Democracy and I don’t think it’s appropriate for the President of The United States of America to be attacking journalism a major pillar of our democracy. The First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” This writing in our First Amendment highlights that in fact, Journalism should be protected by our government. Mr. President, I get your frustrations with the media every President has them they feel like their stories are unfair and cast a negative light on their Administration, You can ask President Barack Obama who constantly called out Fox News for their constant negative stories on The Obama Administration, “I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down or call them enemies of the people.” Obama said. Mr. President you have taking media grievances to a new high attacking The New York Times and Washington Post for reporting insider stories on the goings-on in The West Wing on Twitter, intimidating various journalistS and news organizations for simply writing damaging stories on The White House, No President should spend their time Tweeting about “The Fake News” instead, The President should be working for the American People. As a result of your attacks media trust has gone down, In an October 28th article by The New York Times they highlighted that because you attacked the Press, 91 percent of “strong Trump supporters” trust him to provide accurate information; 11 percent said the same about the news media. This should be alarming in a time where we don’t have leaders telling the truth. Journalists are the watchmen that ask our leaders the tough questions that’s how democracy should work. For example, you have falsely characterized the December 2017 tax cuts as the “largest” or the “biggest” in American history over 100 times (several others were larger). You have misleadingly said over 90 times that your promised wall along the southern border is being built (construction has not begun on any new section). You have falsely accused Democrats of supporting “open borders” over 60 times (Democratic lawmakers support border security, but not his border wall). And you have lobbed over 250 inaccurate attacks on the investigation into Russian election interference. You have spread innumerable falsehoods on President Obama and Hillary Clinton that are simply not true. You have spread falsehoods on tariffs, immigration law, health insurance, veterans’ health care, tax reform, aviation safety, automotive safety tests (and whether they involve bowling balls), border fencing, foiled terrorists, job creation, among many others. You made this claim “My administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” Trump told the United Nations in September 2018 address.
When it comes to legislation, Mr. President you have signed plenty of bills in your first two years as president, but President Barack Obama, in his first two years in office, signed significantly more.
And not all legislation is created equal. you have struggled to sign the kind of major legislation he promised on the campaign trail. you tried and failed several times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. your signature legislative achievement, tax reform, has fallen short of your boasts about it and you have offered vague promises of a second tax cut to compensate.
your first real bipartisan achievement — a criminal justice reform bill called the “First Step Act” — was signed into law in late December, after you made this hyperbolic claim. The Washington Post reported that you have made 1,989 false and misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database, which tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. By the end of the year, you have accumulated more than 7,600 untruths during your presidency — averaging more than 15 erroneous claims a day during 2018, almost triple the rate from the year before. The New York Times reported that in his first 10 months in office, President Obama had told 103 separate untruths, many of them repeatedly. Obama told 18 over his entire eight-year tenure. In your first 10 months, you told nearly six times as many lies as Barack Obama. What all of this highlights is that journalists must call out falsehoods when they see it. It’s not media bias it’s for the sake of our democracy.
A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, met with you on July 20. Sulzberger pressed you on his “deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric” and told you that “this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.” Days after this off-the-record conversation, you mischaracterized it, tweeting that they’d had a “good and interesting meeting” in which he discussed “the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media.” Sulzberger was aghast and released a statement about how he had tried to warn you about the dangers that extend from “undermining the democratic ideals of our nation.” Undeterred, you responded on Twitter by portraying journalists who report unsettling facts about his administration as “very unpatriotic” provocateurs who put “the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk.”
All of this is to plan; to dominate the discourse about his presidency, Mr. President you know that you must make the people reject journalism that speaks truth to his power. you are blunt about this. “Stick with us,” you told a veterans’ convention on July 24, 2018. “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.” Egging on the crowd’s hissing at reporters and camera crews, you shouted: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” This kind of environment you are creating is a state of chaos,
On August 22nd, 2018 someone called the Los Angeles bureau of the A.P. and said, “At some point, we’re just gonna start shooting you fucking assholes.” Earlier in the month, a man identifying himself as “Don” from State College, Pennsylvania, called C-Span and threatened to shoot CNN’s Don Lemon and Brian Stelter. MSNBC’s Katy Tur said on air that she had received a letter that said, “I hope you get raped and killed.” Fortunately, none of these threats were actual attacks. But, given their rising number, the poisonous political climate, and the number of guns in this country, media organizations are rightly taking the situation seriously. Some are quietly beefing up security at their offices. Security guards now accompany network news reporters to Trump rallies. (Is this the New America?)
All of this culminated In late October 2018, sixteen packages containing pipe bombs were mailed via the U.S. Postal Service to several prominent critics of U.S. President Donald Trump, including leading Democratic Party politicians such as former U.S. President Barack Obama, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. While the packages were initially treated as live bombs, the analysis indicated some of them could not explode, though it is unclear if they were “intentional” duds.
Other people who were sent packages include U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, U.S. Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, two former intelligence chiefs (ex-CIA Director John O. Brennan and ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper), billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer, and actor Robert De Niro. One package was addressed only to CNN and sent to its world headquarters. If these packages had denoted it would have been a trying time for this country, but the bomb scare also showed us that Mr. President your attacks on the media are working immediately after the scare you tweeted
“Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing,” he wrote, “yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, ‘it’s just not Presidential!” “President Blames Media For Attempted Bombs,” read the onscreen chyron on “Good Morning America” as an ABC News correspondent, Jonathan Karl, briefed the anchor George Stephanopoulos on the president’s latest digital sortie from the still-dark White House lawn. remarked by The New York Times. Shortly before federal authorities arrested Cesar Sayoc Jr. — a registered Republican with a criminal record whose social media accounts were filled with right-wing conspiracy memes — you were was back on Twitter spewing nonsense.
“Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this ‘Bomb’ stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows — news not talking politics,” you wrote in a 10:19 a.m. post on Friday.
By referring to likely domestic terrorism as “this ‘Bomb’ stuff” and tying it to the coming midterm elections, Mr. President you were making the not-so-veiled suggestion that the news media was exaggerating the story because of some political motivation. Even in a national crisis, you were sticking with your anti-media strategy. The President of the United States of America’s main job is to unite the country in trying times not to try and divide them. While some might say that the Mainstream Media is waging a war against Trump by leaking stories and reporting false stories. Some might also say that the Mainstream Media is attacking Trump because it doesn’t want the public to know about the real story whether it’s Barack Obama funneling money to Iran or Barack Obama disregarding that Russia interfered in the 2016 Election or that Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians (Come On, Man) many see your attacks as justified because the media is on a political witch hunt that is trying to end your Presidency. Secondly many see your attacks as justified because they believe that the Mainstream Media is somehow working with The Democrats and “The Resistance” to try and Impeach you. This all isn’t true… The Media isn’t working to try and impeach you or throw you out of office the media isn’t biassed towards President Obama or Secretary Clinton (Did you read The New York Times’s coverage of Hillary’s emails) The Media has held every President accountable for their actions including Barack Obama. The Media is doing its job by reporting what’s going on in The White House even if you don’t like it. It’s called reporting It’s not called a witch hunt, Mr. President.
In conclusion, I’d like to quote John Nichols of “The Nation” magazine, “ Trump and his supporters have attacked the judiciary, threatened to jail political opponents, made false claims about illegal voting, and attempted to redefine the rules regarding presidential accountability. At the core of this assault on democracy is Trump’s unwavering obsession with undermining the media outlets that attempt to hold him to account.”
The vital institution of American journalism has never been in greater need of a forceful advocate in the White House. Instead, we have a demagogue and bully who is trying to tear it down. So journalists who are serious about defending the freedom of the press must become more outspoken about the threat this president poses. They must show solidarity with one another, especially when The President of The United States of America attacks particular media outlets or when his aides seek to stifle questions from particular reporters. And they must remind the public of why they are so necessary to democracy itself by focusing on the real scandals, like the decimation of regulations designed to keep Americans safe and the assaults on civil rights and civil liberties. As George Mason put it more than two centuries ago, “freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.”
P.S. Enjoy going down in history as being a one-term, impeached President who lost the national popular vote twice and got beat by President Obama’s former Vice President who you deemed as “Sleepy Joe”
Salutations,
Mhambi Musonda
