The Republican Party, led by President Donald Trump, has been widening its war on the press at a breathtaking pace
First came the body slam, as Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte grabbed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs by the neck and lifted him off the ground Wednesday afternoon at a Montana campaign event. Then came the punches as Jacobs lay sprawled on the floor. Here’s how Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna the jaw-dropping assault. She and two of her colleagues were in the room when the Gianforte attack took place: The candidate, who’s running in a special election today, has for the assault. It’s all very shocking, but it’s not surprising. It’s shocking that a grown man who wants to represent the voters of Montana in the halls and chambers of Congress decided to physically assault a reporter who was pressing the candidate with about the Congressional Budget Office’s projections for the proposed GOP health care plan. “The eye-witness accounts and the recordings have stunned us, ” the Billings Gazette, Montana’s newspaper, which withdrew its endorsement of Gianforte last night. “We must adopt zero tolerance for such behavior if freedom of expression means anything.” But it’s not surprising. It’s not surprising because the Republican Party, led by President Donald Trump, has been widening at a breathtaking pace over the last two years. journalists as the “enemy of the people, ” Trump has signaled to the party and to the larger conservative movement that it’s open season on the news media. “I called the fake news ‘the enemy of the people’ — and they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources, they just make them up when there are none, ” Trump during his address at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.
