Donald Trump just issued a direct threat to the free and independent media

[orangecrush]

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump has said a lot of bad things about the media since he started running for president two-plus years ago. He's suggested that the press doesn't really like America. He has said the media is the "enemy of the American people." He has repeatedly called journalists the "most dishonest" people. He has worked to paint news stories he doesn't like as "fake" -- and claimed he created that term.

But he's never gone as far as he did on Wednesday morning when he tweeted this: "With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!"
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Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!
9:55 AM - Oct 11, 2017
48,327 48,327 Replies 13,231 13,231 Retweets 53,396 53,396 likes
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What Trump is suggesting here is that the Federal Communications Commission needs to examine its licensing procedures for major news networks because what they are reporting is not to his liking. The coverage isn't positive enough for Trump, so he wants some sort of punitive action doled out.
At a photo-op with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump added that "it is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write"
This is, simply put, the stuff of authoritarian governments. Democracy is built on the free and independent press. If/when a president or any leader seizes the ability to control the news media, democracy dies.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/11/politics/donald-trump-media-tweet/index.html

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. He is an idiot who thinks there is a single license NBC or CNN gets.

He doesnt understand how our country operates.

He better be fucking removed before he does anymore damage.

[Dave Starsky]

5. The FCC doesn't even regulate cable channels.

I swear that this clown has never demonstrated knowledge or awareness of ANY subject whatsoever.

[orangecrush]

8. I get that, but

the fact that a sitting President just advocated shutting down the free press is the real issue.

It is a trial balloon, imo.

[Eliot Rosewater]

9. Oh yes, it is a sick and twisted time we live in that half the voting population

supports censorship of the truth.

[Alice11111]

2. Take Fox license...for deliberate lies

[Hortensis]

6. Oh, if he'd only go after Jeff Zucker, and somehow get him. Poetic justice.

[Alice11111]

11. Probably one of the few he won't go after.

[Hortensis]

12. Probably, but he's specifically angry at CNN, like a friend who turned on him.

[Alice11111]

13. They are not treating him with kid gloves eiher. TG they stand up to him

[Hortensis]

15. "Stand up to him" is how to pump ratings right now. Jeff Zucker created Trump

as a national figure and then gave him hours of free coverage every day during the campaign when he ran for president. Zucker also packed CNN with conservative faces who worked hard to portray the Democratic Party as corrupt. A line pushed by some supposedly on our side, of course.

In any case, CNN under Zucker is very much one of the villains in today's reality show.

[Alice11111]

16. I agree that CNN, & all of the networks helped elect him.

For that, F them
Chris Matthews gave K Conway a full hr of his obsequious gushing immediately before one of the debates. That stuff went on all of the time, false equivalency BS. Then, they lt him off easy with his sex scandals, which were on videotape, with bim bragging!

They could use the Weinstein scandal to reunite Moron's.
Huff Post did a good job of that yesterday.

[Hortensis]

17. Yes, to all. When are their ratings going to fall because of this?

Of course, only a minority of the population watches cable news and/or reads newspapers, but probably they're above average in voting rates.

[Alice11111]

18. They watch Foxaganda...same place the Prez gets his lntel

[Hortensis]

20. Yes, but I mean most political talk shows. All networks are actively complicit

in bringing our nation to this deluded and demoralized point. For profit.

Most Americans live safe, secure lives and don't even know it. We've lived through 30 years of declining violent crime rates but because of TV news most Americans think we've had 30 years of rising violent crime rates. And this kind of delusion extends to every area of public affairs. Because every situation or problem sensationalized and blown up into fake disasters and controversies draws viewers.

We were bequeathed a magnificently functioning western democractic government structure that is the envy of well over 100 nations, and critical numbers of Americans now believe it is too broken and corrupt to be worth fighting for, while at the same time incredibly foolishly not knowing what would take its place. But people who believe we need to repair, adjust and improve on the proven principles and structures that those who came before left us -- those people are reviled from both sides as weak and foolish at best.

No one is more culpable in this dangerous national stupidity than the screen media most here marinate in every day. Fox is merely the worst of a rotten lot.

[Alice11111]

21. I certainly agree, but it's different this time. They went

too far. I'm not sure we will recover.

[Hortensis]

22. Neither am I. People have to wise up fast and ally against destructive forces.

Our structure stands. We still have a democratic republic and We the People will decide. Will we follow the way those who came before us did, or the way others who were deluded into voting to destroy the democracies they were born into did -- by placing their nation into the hands of those who should never have been trusted?

[Alice11111]

23. I think we already did that...gave it to those who should

Not be trusted. We know they have cheated before, but now they have more power than ever before, and they've pretty much fixed it so we can't get it back. They are taking us down faster and faster.

Sorry, I'm so negative. Everyone used to tell me, most of my life, I was an optimistic realist. Now, I'm a pessimist.

[Cracklin Charlie]

3. How does anyone who lies all the time...

Get away with calling someone else a liar?

Makes no sense.

[Alice11111]

14. His ignorant, angry, bigoted base justs get so excited that they wet their pants, they are so proud

Of their bully idiot saying all of the shit he is going to do and is doing...they love those fact free rages. They are just like the ones in the campaign & his aim is directly for that base. As far as the rest of us, they just get off to upsetting us.

[randr]

4. I think all but Faux would pass a veracity test

Bring it on.

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. I'll go WAY out on a limb here...

I suspect FOX just wants this story to get buried by the next Trump outburst. I think their instinct on this will be to lie low if they can. But if they can't, if Trump keeps coming back to this threat and doesn't let it sink from public attention, I think even FOX news will oppose this in public. They won't lead the pack, they won't feature their position, but if this stays an issue I predict FOX will break with Trump on this one issue. There is some rudimentary semblance of career solidarity among journalists. I suspect even some of the company line types that FOX employ will be restless supporting Trump on this one.

[chelsea0011]

10. Media has been on his ass for 50 years and this position gives him a platform

to get back at them even if he goes full fascist.

[MineralMan]

19. Trump understands nothing.

He knows nothing. He believes nothing.

Donald Trump IS nothing.