Did Democracy Die in Darkness?

Did Democracy Die in Darkness?

Is Mainstream Media No Longer the Message?

“If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this [mainstream] media, and we’ve lost this audience completely… A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form. And the question is what does it look like after.” Anonymous Media Executive in NY Magazine.

“Their ability to set the narrative has been destroyed. Trump declared war on the media in 2016. Tonight he vanquished them completely. They will never be relevant again.” 

Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh wrote on X post-Trump victory

“I think for all of us who cover elections and talk about elections and do this on a day-to-day basis, we have to figure out how to understand talk to and listen to the half of the country that rose up tonight and said, ‘We have had enough.’” 

 Scott Jennings, CNN commentator.

Is it ironic that Jeff Bezos, Amazon entrepreneur who owns the “liberal” Washington Post, got a nine-figure appreciation in his stock because of the post-Trump victory market surge? The Post’s masthead that reads “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Was Bezos seeing the future when, days before the election, he pulled the Post’s expected endorsement of Kamala Harris?

The lowest expectation is that Trump will hammer traditional media harder than ever. “If history is any guide, Trump is never, ever satisfied with news coverage. He always wants a more pliant, propagandistic media. He even complains about Fox News on a regular basis, despite the network’s overwhelming support for him. Last month, he complained to Fox patriarch Rupert Murdoch about the network airing Democratic ads.

“Thus, Trump’s reelection portends a new period of hostility with major media outlets that strive for impartiality as well as partisan outlets that oppose him. This raises another set of questions… Will the Trump administration turn his words against the press into actions? Will he move to revoke licenses for TV stations, as he has suggested more than a dozen times this year? Will he limit press access to the White House, barring reporters he doesn’t like?... Further, will media outlets engage in self-censoring to appease Trump, and if so, how will readers and viewers who oppose Trump react?

“On Wednesday [11/6] morning, newsroom leaders and owners are reassuring employees that they will have their backs in the uncertain months to come. ‘Now, more than ever, we are steadfast in our mission to uphold the principles of independent journalism,’ Conde Nast chief Roger Lynch wrote in a memo to staffers. ‘A thriving, independent press, as protected by the First Amendment, is vital to democracy and the future we all share.’” CNN News, November 6th. That thriving independent press got it wrong. Their pollsters missed macrotrends that showed America’s most successful conman was gathering votes in unexpected places, notably Hispanic males endorsing old-school masculinity. Their bias against Trump’s abysmal character glowed brightly. Younger voters, hooked on TikTok and X for their news, didn’t have a chance to be swayed by mainstream media; they don’t watch it. Women were supposed to vote Democrat over abortion, but it seems that issue hardly drove them to Harris.

Many hope that Trump’s resounding victory (gaining almost 70 Electoral College votes over Harris) would placate the hard right. But as the November 6th Wired points out, MAGA extremists want Trump to drill down on the liberal mainstream press and targeted Democratic opponents: “Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States, and the same far-right extremists emboldened by his first administration are celebrating his win with violent memes and threats… Many of the social media posts reviewed by WIRED reveled in fantasies of Trump locking up and even executing his political opponents in revenge. ‘Build the gallows!!’ urged a post on Gab, a social media platform that caters to the far right.”

In the past, Mike Davis, a Republican lawyer and former Senate aide whose name has repeatedly come up as a potential attorney general, “has said he wants to imprison journalists in ‘gulags,’ though the line between what Davis calls ‘trolling’ and his earnest dialogue sometimes isn’t easily discernible , as a Politico profile from September noted… In any event, Davis‘ string of posts following Trump’s win made no mention of taking the ‘high road,’ so to speak… ‘F--- unity. We have the votes. And they tried to kill Trump,’ he wrote in another post minutes earlier, making an overly broad reference to ‘they.’” The Daily Beast, November 6th.

Former Mike Pence national security advisor, Olivia Troye, noted on MSNBC on November 7th, “Trump risks putting a target on the back of anyone who opposes him… he would effectively grant immunity to extremists who could commit acts of violence on his behalf… Who will stop him? Allies like Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn and Stephen Miller? The Supreme Court? The Justice Department? Don’t kid yourself…

“‘Trump has been building his own media company… A worst-case scenario would see this becoming an arm of the government, not unlike state-sponsored propaganda outlets in autocratic countries. There's no guarantee that will happen, but the free press could increasingly face intimidation: comply or else. And if journalists become restricted, the public will be starved for objective reporting.’” And exactly what risks would liberal journalists face as Trump pardons hundreds of violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021? Retribution and revenge have been high priority campaign platforms in Trump’s MAGA world.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as MAGA nears controlling the House as well as the Senate, we may be watching the rest of the driving force to repeal the First Amendment.