He’s laying the groundwork for restricted access to the presidency.
He’s only going to let those who will write what he wants speak to his administration.
We’re only going to be reading and watching propaganda and expect real journalists to be starved out, fired, sued and smeared by the remaining press.
We already have laws on the books that make it illegal for journalists/cameras to go on farms to investigate how unsanitary they are, and their human rights and animal cruelty violations. How much easier will it be to concoct some “threat to national security” that necessitates restricted access to government?
Update: The New York Times said they didn’t even know the meeting with Trump was cancelled until they saw his tweet this morning. “We did not change the ground rules and made no attempt to.”
here’s the funny thing abt this though (and by funny i mean horrifying):
that “off-record” meeting that trump invited folks to? wound up being a prolonged shouting match between him and every reporter currently on tv who ever had the gall to, according to him, talk about his behaviour in any kind of critical way whatsoever.
think about this for a moment. the press has literally been treating him with kid gloves so far, and given him SO MUCH of the benefit of the doubt that they shouldn’t even have given him, and he STILL thinks that the press was “unfair” and “critical” of him and his atrocious behaviour. so much so that he invited them to a meeting with the specific intention of shouting at them for it, trying to intimidate them into silence, and had them agree to it before hand that none of his behaviour would ever be widely reported since it was “off-record.”
this is suppression of the press. this is what infringing on press freedom looks like. even the current level of reporting on trump by news outlets is insufficiently subservient for his ego.