Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is a victim of “fake news.”

But future historians will note how often the media ignored the foremost reality of their time: That the United States was led by a psychopathic dictator. 

This is true even for CNN, the network that Trump clearly hates the most.

In a May 22, 2018 CNN essay on Trump vs. the press, longtime political consultant David Gergen wrote:

“Instead of raging on about ‘fake news,’ the President would do well to read Peggy Noonan [a Ronald Reagan speechwriter turned author] on Reagan and focus on building his character.”

So what’s wrong with this? 

Trump was 72 years old when this was written. George Orwell wrote that, by age 50, every man has the face he deserves. By age 72, every man has the character he has spent his life being. And Trump’s life has been dedicated to inflating his wallet and his ego.

He isn’t going to radically change at this point—especially if he believes himself “a very stable genius.”

Donald Trump

Then there’s a July 30, 2018 story on CNN: “Trump Opens Window Into His Rage With Mueller Attack.”

This focused on a tweetstorm Trump launched against Special Counsel Robert Mueller just two days before Mueller prosecuted Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman. 

Among those tweets: 

“Is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship, I turned him down to head the FBI (one day before appointment as S.C.) & Comey is his close friend.”

And: 

“…Also, why is Mueller only appointing Angry Dems, some of whom have worked for Crooked Hillary, others, including himself, have worked for Obama….And why isn’t Mueller looking at all of the criminal activity & real Russian Collusion on the Democrats side-Podesta, Dossier?”

Robert Mueller

CNN characterized this cascade of libels as a “trio of tweets…packed with inaccuracies and misrepresentations.” 

An accurate description would have been: “Lies.”

There were no “conflicts of interest” on Mueller’s part. And having been FBI director for 12 years (2001-2013) he had no desire to once again assume such a grueling burden at age 72.

Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, described a meeting between himself and Trump: 

“I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people.’ I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence. 

“I repeatedly stressed that this is particularly true abroad, where the president’s rhetoric is being used by some regimes to justify sweeping crackdowns on journalists. I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: a commitment to free speech and a free press.”

Arthur Gregg Sulzberger

Appealing to Trump’s “better angels” was an exercise in futility—and insanity. 

A 2016 analysis by USA Today found that for 30 years, Trump and his businesses had been involved in 3,500 legal cases in U.S. federal and state courts. This is not a man who, at heart, is a peacemaker. 

Nor does he respect truth. The Washington Post has reported that, by March 17, 2019, Trump said or tweeted 9,179 lies or misleading statements. This makes for an average of 11.6 lies a day. 

To expect that Trump has any regard for such Constitutional niceties as freedom of the press is beyond rationality. 

He intends to strip every potential challenger to his authority—or his version of reality—of legitimacy with the public.  If he succeeds, there will be:

• No independent press to reveal his failures and crimes.
• No independent law enforcement agencies to investigate his abuses of office.
• No independent judiciary to hold him accountable.
• No independent military to dissent as he recklessly hurtles toward a nuclear disaster.
• No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge him for re-election in 2020.
• No candidate—Democrat or Republican—to challenge his remaining in office as “President-for-Life.”

Yet the media—including CNN—refuses to brand Trump as the liar and dictator he clearly is.

Reporters who cover the White House are among the most knowledgeable their newspapers/networks have to offer. They see the President up close not only there but at campaign stops and state occasions. They quickly gain a sense of him as a man.

So it can’t be ignorance that leads so many of them to refrain from telling the truth. The answer has to be cowardice—by them and/or by their editors.

Newspapers fear Trump’s attacks on their integrity—and the loss of subscriptions. They fear the press will fall into even lower esteem than it’s now held. (An Ipsos poll shows almost a third of Americans agree the news media is “the enemy of the people.”)

For the owners of TV networks, there is an added fear of having their licenses challenged by the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the airwaves. 

Regardless of the reason for this cowardice, it ill serves the journalism profession—and the country.