As you all know last night Trump doubled down on this threat to try and shut down media companies:
Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017
Later last night Ben Sasse had this response to Trump’s threat:
Mr. President:
— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) October 12, 2017
Are you recanting of the Oath you took on Jan. 20 to preserve, protect, and defend the 1st Amendment? pic.twitter.com/XLB7QXM3bQ
Despite the fact that these MSM companies don’t have licenses like their affiliates do, I think it’s a good question and one that Trump should answer.
As both Sooper and I argued yesterday, shutting down media companies isn’t the way to fight bad reporting. That’s what authoritarians do in countries like Turkey and they do it to silence their critics.
Aside from his threatening tweets, Trump actually handled the ‘fake news’ rather well yesterday, disputing it on Twitter and getting his Secretary of Defense to corroborate his side of the story by releasing a strong statement against the story.
In fact he’s still tweeting about it today.
The Fake News Is going all out in order to demean and denigrate! Such hatred!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017
Trump has a big Twitter account with tens of millions of followers. He should stick to putting out the truth and stay away from threats to bully and intimidate the media.
UPDATE:
Apparently Hannity doesn’t like this tweet at all:
One of the biggest mistakes in my career was supporting @BenSasse Just useless. https://t.co/bYReWFdfKO
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 12, 2017
I don’t know why. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.