Famed Journalist Says Press ‘Shouldn’t Be Neutral’ On Trump, Warns Of ‘Assassinations’ During 2nd Term

(Daily Caller) Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof wrote in his new book that the American press should not remain “neutral” when it comes to covering former President Donald Trump because of the alleged threat he poses to democracy.

In a CNN interview about the book, Kristof argued the media erred by treating Trump as “just another candidate” in 2016 and should instead take an active stance against him, the same way the media should have when covering McCarthyism or segregation, CNN reported.

“Likewise, in the civil rights movement, it didn’t work to quote Martin Luther King Jr. in one paragraph and George Wallace in the next. It took reporters going down South and, at considerable risk, conveying the brutality of Jim Crow segregation. Likewise, I think in 2016 we in the media treated Trump as just another candidate when, in my view, he was quite different. We were fair but perhaps not truthful, and I think our paramount responsibility is to convey the truths we know. But doing that with humility and effectiveness is really hard to pull off,” Kristof said during a CNN interview.

In his book, he warns about Trump and his allies’ alleged attempts to “undermine democracy” and establish “populist authoritarianism,” according to CNN. Kristof also argues that, in a second term, Trump could weaponize the federal government “to punish or intimidate news organizations” and even carry out “assassinations.”

“I’ve seen how countries can unravel and how democracies can become more despotic, and I do think that many Americans don’t appreciate the risks. We tend to think that change will be linear. Sometimes it zigs or zags,” Kristof told CNN.

President Joe Biden’s administration, Democratic politicians and the corporate media have all portrayed Trump as a potential dictator and threat to democracy. Biden has reportedly pushed to focus his campaign on fighting for democracy rather than focus on Democrats’ winning issues, such as abortion, ahead of the 2024 election.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, compared the former president to Adolf Hitler and accused him of showing “dictatorial tendencies” during a Nov. 8 segment on “The View.” A CNN analyst said in 2019 that Trump’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) “sounded a lot like” the Nazi dictator. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow also brought up Hitler while commenting on Trump’s inaugural address.

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough claimed in Feb. 2020 that Trump would lock up “every journalist he didn’t like” if he could get away with it.

Trump himself said during a December interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that he would only be a dictator on “day one” of his second term. He later told Time that the comment “was said in fun, in jest, sarcastically.”

A PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist poll found that 53 percent of independent voters believe a Biden win in 2024 would “weaken America” more than a Trump victory, while 42 percent believed Trump would harm democracy.