President Donald Trump’s latest tirade shows a leader so consumed by grievance that he’s once again lashing out in a way that even Fox News can’t quite smooth over.
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Chatting with The New Republic’s Greg Sargent for his Monday morning podcast, Harvard political scientist Ryan Enos argued that Trump’s latest attack on the election from six years ago was like a live-action portrait of a political meltdown.
Other than his conspiracy theories about the election itself, Trump is also escalating his attacks on news networks that refuse to play a part in his scheme. Last week, NBC, CNN, and some ABC affiliates refused to air the speech, escalating his claims.
It has set networks up for another battle with the Trump government as he tries to pull network licenses through his Federal Communications Commission. The goal is intimidation, with the hopes that the next time Trump demands time on the airwaves, the networks will be too nervous to buck him.
“And then Trump’s plot of using the news organizations to spread distrust in our elections could work,” said Sargent.
Enos called it another authoritarian move and contrary to the First Amendment. But at its most basic, he said it was “essentially schoolyard extortion … Like, it’d be really bad if you didn’t do what I want. Maybe you’ll have an accident next time you’re walking home or something like that.”
The hope is that these arguments will ultimately go to court and they’ll continue protecting the First Amendment. What was unique in this situation is that even Fox News is growing nervous, because it’s still fighting litigation with the voting equipment and software company Smartmatic. So, Fox has been cautious in its reporting on the 2020 election. It told the audience it wasn’t in a position to evaluate Trump’s claims. The network may have agreed to air Trump’s speech, but it refused to run Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s rehashing of it.
The fact that Mullin felt the need to continue the message from Trump, Sargent said, “shows Trump continued to rage over it, because that’s the only reason these guys ever say anything. It’s to minister to the audience of one.”
“Trump thinks that the American people are a lot dumber than they actually are, which is sort of one of the tragedies of his whole administration: how stupid he actually thinks the American people are,” Enos said. “But the American people aren’t buying this. You can see this in the polls. Like, even only about half of Republicans actually say they believe this, right? And I’m not sure even that half actually believes what they’re saying they believe.”
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Enos noted that frequently, civil lawsuits get a bad rap, but in this case, the Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic lawsuits have made a difference, and the judgments are high enough that it is curbing the behavior from the network and its hosts.
“The other thing I would say about it is this fact that Fox thought it was just bad politics,” Enos added. “And you see a lot of Republican politicians saying this too. There’s a lot of signs that members of Congress want Trump to move on. And they all know what he’s saying is not true, but they unfortunately feel obligated—they can’t cross him on this issue, right? And what that signals is that the American people aren’t buying this.”
Still, he added, Trump keeps trying to sell it.
“So, at that point you’re interfering with an election that you can’t win legitimately, and in which the American people have rejected you, in order to impose your will essentially on the country. And at that point, we’re not living in a democracy,” Enos explained.
Sargent also mentioned that an additional issue for Trump is that, despite being the most powerful man in the country, he still couldn’t force networks to give him the attention he demanded.
“He’s angry because he needs the media to broadcast his lies about our election system precisely in order to help him spread distrust in the outcome, right?” Sargent asked Enos, who agreed.
“And I think there’s two ways to look at his anger at the media: On the one hand, it shows the media is doing the right thing, right? They figured out what Trump’s up to,” Enos said. “They know he’s going to lie. And they’re in many ways taking a stand for democracy.”
The second point is that it is causing Trump to go more and more authoritarian in his anger with his attempts to use the federal government to force corporations into doing what he demands.
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