So what's with the coordinated media campaign this week claiming a second Trump term will usher in the end of the republic and the rise of a fascist dictatorship? Well, three weeks ago, President Joe Biden's reelection campaign scolded the press for not attacking Donald Trump hard enough, specifically calling out The New York Times, saying "It's time to meet the moment and responsibly inform the electorate of what their lives might look like if the leading GOP candidate for president is allowed back in the WH." As my colleague David Harsanyi noted at the time, the Biden camp wasn't working the refs, it was demanding obedience.
Robert Kagan penned a column about how to stop the "Trump dictatorship." The always-absurd Jennifer Rubin used her column at the Post to heap praise on Liz Cheney, who went on the Sunday shows to warn that if Trump is elected, it will be the last election we ever have, and that we're "Sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States." It's fair to call this kind of rhetoric "Assassination prep," because of course if this will really be the last election, if we're really facing a fascist dictatorship in Trump's second term, well then drastic measures are necessary, are they not? That's the tacit argument being advanced in these pieces.
All through Trump's presidency, reporters and columnists for the Post repeatedly described Trump as a rat and his officials and supporters as rats or vermin.
"Don't blame the rats abandoning the USS Trump," went a December 2018 headline from Dana Milbank - a phrase and image that comes up over and over in the Post's Trump coverage going back to before the 2016 election.
During Trump's first year in office, the Post reported on an outsized balloon depicting Trump as a rat and included multiple images of Trump as a rat.
In 2019, Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes drew dozens of disgusting red-eyed vermin under the title "Trump's Republican rats." But if Trump calls his opponents "Vermin"? He's just like Hitler.
Ordinary Americans who remember what the economy was like during the Trump years aren't going to be fooled - no matter how many bylines the Times adds to its 3,000-word think pieces about the coming dictatorship of Trump.
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