Donald Trump walked away from an assassination attempt.And we are glad.But now he has pumped his fist and yelled, “Fight, fight, fight.”And it’s time to wish him well, but turn attention back to what America is facing if he runs this gauntlet and is re-elected.
Be worried.Revenge is in the air.
“I am your warrior, I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” Trump said in March at a conservative group’s rally.My concern — and the fear of those who worry about the fate of democracy — is how that will translate into treatment of the press and freedom of speech. Can the First Amendment hold up to what is coming?
“The LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage,” Trump wrote in a TruthSocial post. “The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!”
Former Trump National Security Council member Kash Patel laid out the scenario: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
What are Marty Baron's fears about freedom of speech under Trump?
With those vows of vengeance chilling in my mind, I called Marty Baron, who for eight years and two months — including during the Trump presidency — was executive editor of The Washington Post. Before that, Baron edited The Boston Globe for 11 years, where his staff exposed the abuses of Catholic priests and won a Pulitzer Prize.
He has long been one of the most important forces — and voices — in American journalism.Baron retired in 2021 — he is now 69 — and wrote a compelling and revealing book, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post,” a memoir that chronicles almost six dramatic years of confrontation.Baron knows close-up what Trump looked like.
“In all my time as a working journalist I had never witnessed a presidential candidate so determined to demolish an independent press and exact vengeance on a media owner,” he wrote.“Trump pursued power with the very purpose of abusing it.He was an aspiring authoritarian.”
I wondered if Baron’s wariness of Trump had cooled in the three years since he retired.Three things emerged from our talk:
- First, he remains optimistic that the American public wants the press to provide them with facts so they can make decisions. And while he worries that Americans “cannot agree on a common set of facts,” he adds, “I do believe a majority of the public is interested in actual evidence. More and more they are asking for proof.”
- Second, he is adamant that the press needs to avoid becoming an advocate so it can remain trustworthy in a time when all institutions are under fire. “We are not activists, not partisans,” Baron counsels. “Tell people what the policies are, what policies are going to be implemented by Donald Trump. People will have to make a choice.”
- And third — and here his passion and anger bubbled over — he sees no change from what he wrote in his book: that Trump strives to “dehumanize” the press.
I asked him what he meant. Trump, Baron said, sees the press as “scum, garbage, the lowest form of life, sub-human. He talks about putting journalists in prison for publishing leaks. He’d be delighted to see journalists sexually assaulted in prison. He wants journalists threatened by government.”
This, he said, “is language you saw in Nazi Germany. He doesn’t care what would happen to a journalist. The threats come from followers who intimidate and assault. He’d like to see reporters in jail. We should take him at his word.”
“He will push the limits of his power,” Baron said.
Will they?Joe Biden and Donald Trump must assure us they'd protect the First Amendment
Trump will first assault the free press — and then the First Amendment
In Baron’s view, however, Trump’s assault on the press is only a first step. Trump “doesn’t believe in the First Amendment. We have people in this country who are not loyal to the Constitution and would like to see an authoritarian regime. There’s an alarming decline in support for democracy around the world and in this country.
“Any effort to eliminate freedom of press,” he warns, “is the first step to eliminate freedom of speech.” And it is often the first move by authoritarians to scuttle any debate or difference of opinion.
There's a critical difference:Trump's mongering of violence isn't protected free speech
If that is the case — I do not doubt it — shouldn’t the press be more than a neutral adversary and more like a warrior fighting for survival?
“We don’t elect presidents,” Baron says.“People will have to make a choice. Good choices, lots of bad choices. All I’m saying is we have our role. Let people decide.
“I’m very resistant to turning ourselves into activists,” he explained. “If we want a strong independent press, we need to behave independently, behave as professionals and not throw out our norms.”
In that regard, Baron is an old-fashioned journalist, believing in objectivity, setting his brand of journalism apart from the cable TV-style and social-media world of opinion after opinion.He wants “an open-minded, rigorous search for the truth,” and then, “tell people what we know to be true once we’ve done our jobs properly.”
Journalists, he insists, should not be stenographers.
As he writes in his book, “Do the work,” the hard work of journalism that digs below the surface.
“I do think it is a problem to judge media by cable television,” he said. “We all get lumped together.It is confusing.”
But it also, as Baron points out, “puts a heavy burden on us to be more transparent, to use all the tools available; to show the original documents, take people to the data. We have the capacity to do all that.”
In his book Baron argues, “Aggressive and revelatory reporting is the only genuinely straightforward way for the press to hold power to account. Democracy depends on an independent press. They are bound together.”
But reliance on an aggressive press might not be enough to thwart the authoritarian lunges of a second Trump White House.
“Clearly an entire administration will use every power in government to go after the press,” he says, repeating, “It’s not just the press. The bigger message., the bigger purpose: To quash freedom of expression.”
Baron offers a grim reminder: “There’s never been a democracy without freedom of the press. When you lose democracy, it is hard to get it back. The Founders have done all the hard work. Once we tear that down, it’s really hard to build it back.
“There is,” he says, “a lot to be concerned about.”
Americans have three months to mull it over.
Rob Miraldi’s First Amendment writing has won numerous awards.He taught journalism at the State University of New York for many years. Twitter: @miral98; email: rob.miraldi@gmail.com
