Readers Write: Trump continues salvo against press

The Island Now

I can’t be accused of beating a dead horse when the horse won’t die.

White House attacks on the press continued unabated during the past week.

Donald Trump doubled down on his “enemy of the American people” accusation and compounded the attack with a complaint about the use by the press of unnamed sources.

That’s like the pot calling the kettle black, since Mr. Trump is notorious for relying on unverified reports for so many of his outlandish claims.

A little more than a week ago, he relied on a television report about an alleged Swedish government cover up of a claimed crisis of violence in Sweden due to a wave of Muslim migration.

That’s all Donald Trump needed to claim that a terrorist attack had occurred in Sweden the previous night, although no such attack happened.

When the Swedish government pushed back on the Trump claims, Fox News attempted to bail him out.

One Nils Bildt, who falsely claimed to be a Swedish defense and national security adviser, appeared on the O’Reilly Factor to defend Mr. Trump.

Turns out, Mr. Bildt is really Nils Tolling, has no ties to the Sweden’s security establishment and is not related to Carl Bildt, a former Swedish Prime Minister.

Just like the thousands of people Mr. Trump claimed to see on television cheering the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11, it never happened.

Donald Trump likes to use the phrase “many people are saying,” to spread conspiracy theories and outright lies.

So we must rely on the press to expose the lies and disinformation emanating from the White House.

And that may become a problem if the Trump administration persists in choosing which media representatives have access to news briefings as happened last Friday, when The New York Times, CNN and others were excluded from an informal White House briefing.

And, yes, the Obama White House was harshly criticized after it tried to exclude Fox News from interviews with administration officials in 2010.

Two wrongs don’t make it right.

Although it may be too soon to form a definitive judgment, a published report indicates that some constitutional law authorities are warning that excluding reporters from briefings that they otherwise have a right to attend because the White House doesn’t like their reporting may amount to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment.

The press must have access and must be free to correct the record of an administration that seems bent on creating a fictional narrative.

Transparency is essential to a functioning democracy.

Jay Feldman

Port Washington

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