Washington Post falls victim to Trump’s Nixon-esque enemies list
Following the decision by the Washington Post that it would not be making an endorsement for president, the question must be asked: Did the newspaper fall victim to Donald Trump and his Nixon-esque enemies list?
Based on history — and an article I wrote in August 2020 — the answer to that question is an undeniable YES!
In August 1971, attorney for President Richard Nixon, John Dean, released an internal memorandum about Nixon’s enemies list and how it would be used to take down “opponents” to his presidency heading into the 1972 election.
The list, which was part of a campaign officially known as the “Opponents List and Political Enemies Project” and became public knowledge during hearings with the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973, had a very specific purpose according to Dean’s memorandum:
“This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in the opposition to our administration. Stated a bit more bluntly — how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” (Emphasis mine)
Nixon’s enemies list included members of the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, along with state-level and other politicians. It also included various political organizations, labor union and business leaders, and celebrities. However, the largest group on Nixon’s hit list was members of the news media.
Nixon was notorious for his hatred of the press. In fact, it was Nixon who first labeled members of the press as “the media” because he felt it made the Fourth Estate sound more ominous, and because he wanted to remove the word “press” from the conversation because it is specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
Using his enemies list, Nixon launched a war against the press. And even though there have been many presidents since who have had their issues with the news media, there has been perhaps no one as filled with hatred and vitriol toward them than Donald Trump.
Unlike Nixon, however, Trump has made no secret of his abhorrence concerning the First Amendment and freedom of the press, nor his reasons for wanting to shut down the Washington Post.
Early in his 2016 campaign, Trump promised to “open our libel laws” so when the press writes “purposely negative and horrible and false articles” about him, he can “sue them and win lots of money.”
“One of the things I’m going to do, and this is going to make it tougher for me…but one of the things I’m going to do if I win…is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.
“We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”
In June 2016, Trump proceeded to revoke the press credentials of the Washington Post for their “incredibly inaccurate coverage” of his campaign, and he added them to a media enemies list that also included at the time: Univision, Buzz Feed, Politico, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and The Des Moines Register. Trump’s list became known as “the blacklist” by members of the press.
The Washington Post recent decision not to endorse a candidate for president isn’t just an open display of Trump’s assault on the First Amendment, but it could be evidence of the unconditional surrender by the American business community to Donald Trump (via The Bulwark):
ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, the Washington Post announced that it would not be making an endorsement in the presidential race. After that, a number of things happened very quickly.
First, the paper’s former executive editor Marty Baron called the decision “cowardice.” Second, at least one senior Post opinion writer resigned. Third, it was leaked that the editor of the editorial page had already drafted the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris when publisher Will Lewis — who is a new hire, hailing from the Rupert Murdoch journalism tree — quashed it and then released a CYA statement about how the paper was “returning to its roots” of not endorsing candidates. The Post itself reported that the decision was made by the paper’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Everything about this story feels like a tempest in a teapot, a boiling story about legacy media fretting over itself in the mirror. It’s not. It’s a situation analogous to what we saw in Russia in the early 2000s: We are witnessing the surrender of the American business community to Donald Trump. (Emphasis mine)
In November 2018, Trump went to war with CNN and tried to have the network banned from the White House. After CNN filed a lawsuit against him for doing so, Trump argued in court that he was able to pick and choose which news media outlets could have access to the White House.
During his 2020 campaign, Trump launched an open assault on the First Amendment by taking his war against the free press to levels Nixon never dreamed of (via TheHill.com):
The White House said … it is compiling a “dossier” detailing what allies to the president say are inaccurate claims made by Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold and others in their coverage of the Trump Organization and its business relationships with various GOP-aligned organizations.
White House spokesman Judd Deere revealed the dossier’s apparent development in a statement to Farenthold and other Washington Post reporters who requested comment from the Trump administration for a story published in the Post detailing the lucrative business arrangements between the federal government and Trump Organization since the president took office.
“The Washington Post is blatantly interfering with the business relationships of the Trump Organization, and it must stop,” Deere wrote a statement to the Post. “Please be advised that we are building up a very large ‘dossier’ on the many false David Fahrenthold and others’ stories as they are a disgrace to journalism and the American people.” (Emphasis mine)
For the record, Farenthold had covered the Trump Organization for many years at the time, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for his 2016 coverage of Trump’s fraudulent charity organization which was later shut down in 2018.
The attack by Donald Trump on the Washington Post proves what we’ve known about him from the beginning: he’s a fascist and a direct threat to liberty and the Constitution.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties. He the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty.
Follow the Strident Conservative on Twitter and Facebook.
Subscribe to receive podcasts of his daily radio feature: iTunes | Pandora | Tune In | iHeart | RSS
For media inquiries or to have David speak to your group, use the Contact Us form.
