President Trump Is Commander-in-Chief of the War on Mainstream Media

[Commentary] President Donald Trump is right. There is an epidemic of “fake news” in America. Only it’s being perpetuated not by his political opponents but by him and his supporters. Trump is quickly undoing America’s traditional role as a champion of free speech and free press in the world. He sounds very much like an authoritarian, even if he lacks the power of one, and actual authoritarians are cheered by his words.

Just hours before Trump’s tweet, Russian President Vladimir Putin had mandated that certain US media outlets, including possibly CNN International, had to register as foreign agents. This was done in retaliation for a Justice Department decision to force RT, which is a Kremlin propaganda organ, to register as a foreign agent in the United States. Like other despots, Putin is eager to erase the distinction between state and independent media and between objective true and the official party line — and Trump is helping him to achieve those nefarious objectives.

Trump’s anti-media rhetoric also found an echo in Egypt, which, like Russia, is a dictatorship that regularly imprisons journalists. A spokesman for Egypt’s foreign ministry tweeted Nov 26: “As usual, deplorable @CNN coverage of Sinai tragedy today. Anchor more interested in reporters access to Sinai than in those who lost their lives !!!” Egypt keeps the media out of the Sinai Peninsula so as to avoid any reporting on the brutality inflicted by its army on the populace — and Trump is presumably just fine with that.

[Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. ]