Just in time for Halloween, the New York Times ran an epic 12-part editorial online, full of multi-media bits and against an ominous black background, “Donald Trump has wielded power as no previous president has, often in open defiance of the law. His actions have raised a chilling question. -- Are We Losing Our Democracy?” If we are, the Times didn’t show it in this extremely weak rant, in which many of the supposedly scary tactics were reminiscent of the previous Biden administration.
The editorial board disguised its political project as some kind of objective scientific inquiry, setting out “a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion,” as if that list wasn’t carefully curated to match up with Trump’s acts in office. Yet even by those standards it failed; most of the paper’s signs of a failing democracy have been committed by varying degrees by previous presidents.
First up, in the #1 slot: “An authoritarian stifles dissent and speech. Trump has started to.”
Over the past year, President Trump and his allies have impinged on free speech to a degree that the federal government has not since perhaps the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. His administration pressured television stations to stop airing Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show when Mr. Kimmel criticized Trump supporters after the murder of Charlie Kirk; revoked the visas of foreign students for their views on the war in Gaza; and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups….
Kimmel lied about the politics of the Kirk shooter, offensively claiming he was a MAGA acolyte. Of course, no mention of President Biden pressuring social media platforms to squelch accounts that dissented from the government line on COVID, or the Biden administration’s Justice Department labeling parents groups as domestic terrorists for voicing concerns about COVID policy and LGBTQ curriculums. No mention of President Obama’s IRS harassment of the Tea Party.
At #2, “An authoritarian persecutes political opponents.”
Following the president’s demands, his appointees have secured indictments of a few critics (including Attorney General Letitia James of New York and the former F.B.I. director James Comey) and ordered investigations of others (including Senator Adam Schiff of California)…..
Of course, James went after Trump first, with a flimsy case over falsifying campaign business records that even liberal experts found dubious, and stunning new details have been released about the immense reach of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s January 6 investigation into President Trump.
At #6: “An authoritarian declares national emergencies on false pretenses." One example:
Mr. Trump’s willingness to kill people without due process, through the blowing up of boats that American officials could instead stop and search, represents one of his most extreme abuses of power….
How soon they forget – in this case, the 2011 Obama-approved killing by drone strike of an American citizen in Yemen: “Justice Department Memo Approving Targeted Killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki.”
Perhaps the most ridiculous example was #7: “An authoritarian vilifies marginalized groups.”
Immigrants have topped his list. Mr. Trump has blamed them for destroying communities and his administration has tried to dehumanize them by posting mocking videos of shackled immigrants....
He has vilified transgender Americans and barred them from military service. He has fired women and people of color from leadership posts and ended programs that promote workplace diversity. His administration has attempted to erase aspects of Black history, including by removing books on slavery and segregation from military libraries and pressuring Smithsonian museums to minimize those subjects….
Mr. Trump is borrowing from the autocrats' playbook by suggesting that some citizens are legitimate and others are second-class.
Trump is going after federally mandated wokeism, discriminatory DEI, and illegal immigration, not trying to make some groups of citizens “second-class.”
The silliest example in #8 -- “An authoritarian controls information and the news media." Trump has started to." This involved the denial of federal dollars to PBS and NPR.
….He pushed Congress to end funding for public radio and television.
How is ending federal government funding for PBS and NPR “controlling the news media”? They think Trump wants "state-run radio and TV," but that's what PBS and NPR sound like when Democrats are in power.
#10 warned “An authoritarian creates a cult of personality.”
....He posts memes in which he wears a crown, including an A.I.-generated video that depicted him flying a jet that dropped fecal matter on protesters. He held a lavish military parade on his birthday….
Trump’s “crown” is an obvious jab at the recent “No Kings” protests. And to complain of a “cult of personality” after the media fawned over President Obama's "chiseled pectorals” is laughable.
#11, “An authoritarian uses power for personal profit,” and complained “Authoritarians often turn the government into a machine for enriching themselves, their families and their allies….”
A shame the Times never devoted such criticism to what NewsBusters calls the Biden Crime Family.
