Both Trump and Clinton stiff-arm the media. Only one is a genuine threat to it.

[Commentary] The Post fact-checking team has a fun look at more than a year of statements by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. You’ll be startled to hear that they concluded that Trump lies a lot more often than Clinton does — and a lot more outrageously, too. Out of 52 statements by Trump, nearly two thirds were deserving of Four Pinnochios, which is to say that they were absurdly outrageous lies. Out of 35 statements by Clinton, a much smaller percentage qualified for that distinction.

However, they also made a point that I have not seen made anywhere else, one that sheds light on an important ongoing debate over how Trump and Clinton treat the press. They noted an important qualitative difference in the process of adjudication that goes on between each of their campaigns and the media. Even if you think Clinton's motives for stiff-arming the media are absurd, it should be acknowledged that her attitude towards it it simply has no equivalence to Trump’s total contempt for the basic functional role of the news media in our democracy. His entire campaign is functionally an exercise in trying to get it to wither away and drop off of our body politic, like a gangrenous limb or frostbitten finger.