BREAKING :

 

Donald Trump has seized control of the Press Pool. 

He now has sole authority over who covers him. 

Tell me how this is democracy.

This is how an authoritarian/fascist behaves.

Vikor Orban did the same thing when he got rid of democratic norms and seized power in Hungary.

When you want to weaken or get rid of a democracy, control the media. 

NYT reporter says Trump handling press like Soviet Kremlin 

"Peter Baker, a leading reporter at The New York Times, blasted President Trump’s White House over its decision to take control of the press pool covering the president and ban The Associated Press from key White House spaces. 

'Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of [Vladimir] Putin’s reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access,' Baker wrote Tuesday afternoon on the social platform X. 

'The message is clear. Given that the White House has already kicked one news organization out of the pool because of coverage it does not like, it is making certain everyone else knows that the rest of us can be barred too if the president does not like our questions or stories.' ” 

 Thomas Jefferson on a free press: 

 "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

On free speech:

 "The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. 

The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. 

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them."