I’ve seen some CNN people do this too; but enough about them. The Atlantic editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, recently claimed that President Trump will be responsible for violence against journalists. Here’s his case:
“Well, part of my reaction is that we’re are all engaged in a reality TV show. That this is a reality TV version of a war between the president and the press,” Goldberg said in an interview with Yahoo! News’ Katie Couric.
“The problem is, and this is what I worry about more than anything else, is that there are people in the country who don’t understand that this a cynical reality TV game,” Goldberg said. “And are going to hear over and over again from the president that the reporters, journalists are enemies of the state… and someone is going to do something violent against journalists in a large way, and then I know where the fault lies.”
First, President Trump never said that journalists are enemies of the State. No, no no. He said this:
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
Trump’s plain meaning is that *poor* journalists undermine American democracy with false or deceptive reporting. That’s emotional, but fair.
Moreover, Trump has yet to prosecute a single journalist. President Obama prosecuted three times as many as all previous Presidents combined. Per The New York Times:
Over the past eight years, the [Obama] administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined…
Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.
So Mr. Goldberg, you can now check off that “be dramatically, hypocritically, self-importantly paranoid” item on your bucket list.
Next, consider the logic. “If someone is going to do something violent…I know where the fault lies.” Has Goldberg just admitted that left-wing journalists are responsible for political violence that has already happened in America? Such the attempted murder of Rep. Steve Scalise by a media-inflamed Bernie bro?
And people like Milo and Ann Coulter already have to spend hundreds of thousands per year, on security. (I recently saw Milo quote a figure of $500k/year.) Would that be the fault of yourself or the left-wing media in general, Mr. Goldberg?