As his aides pressure foreign regimes on press freedoms, President Trump focuses on punishing reporters

The Trump administration spoke out forcefully against efforts by China and Myanmar to punish news reporters and political dissidents. But at the White House, President Donald Trump was focused on another case — his efforts to discredit CNN correspondent Jim Acosta. Acosta and others like him are “bad for the country,” President Trump told a conservative news outlet. In a fundraising email, his campaign highlighted Trump’s move to strip Acosta’s White House pass and declared that the president “will NOT put up with the media’s liberal bias and utter disrespect.” Trump’s latest assault on the press corps comes amid his mounting domestic political problems as Democrats prepare to take over the House in January. Yet in his bid to assert greater control over the media at home, President Trump threatens to undermine his administration’s efforts to curtail human rights abuses abroad.