Around this time nine years ago, Donald Trump, just a month into his first term, appeared at a conservative event where he delivered a highly provocative vow.
“No one loves the First Amendment more than me,” the Republican claimed before condemning the nation’s free press. Journalists, he said, “have their own agenda and it’s not your agenda. … We’re gonna do something about it.”
The quote came to mind anew on Friday morning. MS NOW reported:
Two journalists, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon, and two people active in Democratic circles in Minnesota have been arrested by federal agents investigating an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a church service.
Lemon was in Los Angeles to cover the Grammy Awards when he was taken into custody Thursday.
There was a recent protest during Sunday services at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the disruption was reportedly driven by demonstrators’ belief that the church’s pastor works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Soon after, federal agents arrested three of those involved with the protest, including civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong. Lemon, who was on hand for the developments, has now also been taken into custody, despite the longtime journalist’s insistence that he was at the church to cover the protest, not to participate in it.
“I’m just here photographing, I’m not part of the group. … I’m a journalist,” Lemon is heard saying in one video of the event.
The Trump administration had tried to secure charges against Lemon in recent days, but to no avail. On Friday morning, however, Attorney General Pam Bondi boasted that he’d been arrested anyway — a development the White House celebrated in an unusually provocative way.
Time will tell what becomes of the criminal case, and Lemon’s lawyer said he will “fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”
But as the details of the case emerge, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the larger context.
Trump’s approach to the freedom of the press has never been especially healthy — we are talking about a president who’s echoed Joseph Stalin in his attacks on journalists — but his campaign against the media has gotten especially aggressive in recent months.
In September, for example, the Republican suggested that “evening shows” are “not allowed” to criticize him and that networks that give him “only bad publicity” risk losing their broadcast licenses. At one point, the president went so far as to claim that broadcasters that air evening news programs are doing something “illegal” if the White House disapproves of their coverage.
The list doesn’t stop there. Trump has sued news outlets that produce coverage he doesn’t like. He’s threatened media outlets over polling data he doesn’t like. He’s threatened to sic federal prosecutors on news organizations that publish reports he doesn’t like.
The FBI even searched the home of a Washington Post reporter and took her devices.
I’m not talking about tantrums the president has thrown over the past decade. I’m referring to specific incidents that have unfolded over the past six months.
That journalists have now been arrested is a dramatic escalation, but it’s not a development that came out of nowhere. On the contrary, Trump and his team have launched a systemic campaign against the nation’s free press that is without modern precedent in the United States — and it’s clearly getting worse.
In the run-up to Election Day 2024, Trump was nearly as eager to attack the free press as he was to attack Kamala Harris. The Republican referred to journalists as “the enemy of the people,” media outlets as “evil” and news professionals as “scum.”
But we’re well past the point of ugly taunts and name-calling. What we’re seeing is an authoritarian leader reading from the same playbook Viktor Orban used in Hungary, targeting journalists and journalism in the hopes of bringing it to heel.
In hindsight, “no one loves the First Amendment more than me” might very well be one of the most offensive lies Trump has ever told.
