Mooretoons

The president and his administration wages war with the press on multiple fronts: demanding the White House press corps to turn off cameras during briefings, labeling all criticism or negative reports as “fake news”, exploiting incidents where news reporting reliant on anonymous leaks needs to be retracted, insulting the appearance of women and disabled reporters, calling the press “the enemy of the people” and so on and on….Last week MSNBC morning show hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed that the White House had demanded the hosts apologize to the president over the phone, or else the TrumpAdmin would release “a negative story” about them. This came the day after the president tweeted insults directed at Brzenzinski. 

Much is being made about how inappropriate and beneath the dignity of the office Trump’s behavior is. All true. He’s a gross sexist pig. But blackmail directly threatens the roots of a constitutionally protected free press and the need for a democracy to have freedom of expression directed at holders of public office and the government in general. The Robert Mueller investigation, as well as Congress, should include looking into these allegations. If true (and so far it looks pretty credible, no matter how loathsome Joe and Mika are), we have one more thing to add to the list of high crimes and misdemeanors.

And the White House press corps should turn on the damn cameras. The White House has no legal basis for enforcing their demands.