The Media Still Doesn’t Grasp the Danger of Trump

"He tells the world he intends to be an authoritarian. So why won’t journalists repeat it?"

Donald Trump represents an existential threat to democracy in the United States. If he is elected president, he will try to become a dictator.

That warning must be repeated, over and over again, so Americans don’t forget it in November.

But that’s not the daily news that you will read or hear in the American press today. Instead, it’s mostly coverage of polls favorable to Trump and cute scene-setting stories about the carnival-like atmosphere at his crazed rallies, where his massive cult following is on display.

That daily coverage ignores the five-alarm fire burning up the 2024 election. The mainstream political press is effectively ignoring the coming national apocalypse. How can that be? How can they once again screw up covering Trump?

After all, Trump isn’t hiding his lust for dictatorial power. He admits it publicly. In December, when his Fox News lackey, Sean Hannity, gave him an opportunity to dispel fears that he wanted dictatorial power, Trump instead offered a rare truth. “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked. “Except for day one,” Trump replied.

Trump is planning a second term that is nothing more than a revenge tour: Deploy the Insurrection Act to crush dissent, turn the Justice Department into a personal weapon to imprison government officials who previously investigated or prosecuted him, persecute former aides who turned against him, pardon himself and his lieutenants, and loot the government to enrich himself and his flailing businesses.

In case anybody has missed his autocratic plans, Trump promoted a video this week about “the creation of a unified Reich” if he is elected.

Even this social media callout to Hitler generated a generally tepid response from the press, like one from an ABC reporter who only dared to say that it was “not normal” for presidential candidates to share “references to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.”

Trump is a fascist. But the mainstream political press doesn’t want to say it. They want to act like 2024 is just another election year.

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