When I read that President-elect Donald Trump had filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register on Monday, my first thoughts were he promised voters he’d go after news organizations that publish or broadcast stories he doesn’t like. And Sen. Dan Sullivan might not have a problem with him violating their First Amendment right because he knows Fox News isn’t on Trump’s hit list.
But even if he thinks it’s wrong, his commitment to self-censoring all criticism of Trump will prevent him from telling us.
Another one of Trump’s authoritarian promises began to harden this week. He never hid his desire to prosecute former Rep. Liz Cheney for her work on the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection. In a social media post on Wednesday, he wrote she “could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence” presented in a report just published by the House subcommittee that investigated the Select Committee. They concluded she should be investigated by the FBI. Trump closed his post by thanking the subcommittee chair “on a job well done.”
Trump-friendly attorney Jonathan Turley had already cast doubt on the legitimacy of the accusations. But we can be sure Sullivan won’t tell us how he really feels about Trump gloating over the opportunity to put his plans of retribution into action.
Sullivan’s lack of transparency is ironic considering the recent compliment he offered Trump.
“President Trump was really transparent,” he told a Fox News host in a discussion about one of his cabinet nominees. He was “probably the most transparent candidate ever on the campaign trail.”
He was very transparent about pardoning people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 insurrection too.
Sullivan shouldn’t be pleased with that. “There is no excuse for political violence,” he said soon after the rioters were removed from the Capitol Building. Then, referring to the fact that Congress certified that Trump lost the election, he added “Those who chose violence in order to disrupt our constitutional duties, however, did not have the last word.”
The real last word should belong to the juries who convicted them and judges who sentenced them. But pardons will give the last word to Trump. If he goes through with it, it’s likely he’ll express his gratitude for their patriotism in defense of his never-ending lies that the election was stolen.
If that happens, we can be certain Sullivan won’t defend the truth.
It’s Trump and his friends at Fox News who taught Sullivan it’s easy to get away with lying to his supporters. At the network, transparency is a one-way mirror. They look out to see what their audience wants to hear and keep their real opinions on the inside. We know that from their internal messages that were revealed during pre-trial proceedings in the lawsuit filed against them by Dominion Voting Systems.
One message from Tucker Carlson said Trump was “playing with fire” with his claims of fraud in 2020.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait,” he wrote in a text message two days before the insurrection. “I hate him passionately.”
Two weeks later, Rupert Murdoch summed it all up by stating “Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25% of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitable it blew up Jan 6th.”
Murdoch wasn’t any innocent bystander in what happened. His network failed to rigorously fact check Trump’s claims following the election. Or at any other time.
The liberal media doesn’t neglect that duty. Do a web search for fact checking President Joe Biden and you’ll find articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and other major outlets including Fox News. Replace Biden’s name with Trump and you’ll find them in all except Fox News.
Two years after the insurrection, Sullivan thought he was smart defending Fox News against accusations that it broadcasts “state-sponsored propaganda.” But that was a week before their incriminating messages became public. Neither he nor the network have ever bothered to tell their audience the truth.
And that’s disturbingly similar to the kind of transparency Big Brother deployed to deceive the citizens of Oceania in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Here’s how to submit a My Turn or letter.
