Kyle Gravel

Herald Contributor

The controversial presidency of Donald J. Trump has continued to transpire and evolve over the past few weeks. With the banishment of multiple media outlets by President Trump and the up and coming reign of alternative facts, he hopes to divulge the facts and see through the opaque presidency as journalists come under fire for their honest but critical reporting on the Trump Administration.

The outlets that were censored from the White House Press Briefing were The Guardian, The New York Times, Politico, CNN, BuzzFeed, BBC, the Daily Mail, and others. This unconstitutional censorship has never been done before in the U.S., though it has been seen throughout history in the cases of dictatorships.

The New York Times took to the press after the entry denial of the many journalists, saying, “Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties.”

CNN Communications then tweeted, “This is an unacceptable development by the Trump White House. Apparently, this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don’t like. We’ll keep reporting regardless.”

One cannot help but see that this profession has been targeted since the get-go of President Trump’s campaign for the presidency.

President Trump has targeted the media since his rise, saying, “Any negative polls are fake news,” and “The leaks are real, the news is fake.”

Most recently, he took it to an all new high, tweeting, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” As you may have noticed, the president is a bit sensitive; he likes people to like him, though it’s tough because he does not make it easy.

The war on the media just elucidates the thin, orange skin President Trump bears while censoring the public on his actual doings and his “Sarah Palin” thought process—sorry for the metaphor, Sarah. Ask Betsy DeVos what a metaphor is… on second thought, that’s a bad idea.

With these dictatorial happenings within the United States, why is Congress lacking the backbone to discuss, nevermind act against this unacceptable and unconstitutional behavior? History often has its place in the present in order to disclose patterns, ergo, emerging threats which give time for us to stop it.

President Trump only has to look as far as his friends and idols, and what they have said, to see how important journalists are:

“It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there’s always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in,” said Julian Assange, Hillary Clinton’s email hacker.

“Journalism, as concerns collecting information, differs little if at all from intelligence work. In my judgment, a journalist’s job is very interesting,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The truth is whatever people will believe,” said Fox News CEO, Roger Ailes, fellow recipient of sexual assault allegations.