Trump Designates Free Press 'Enemy Of The People,' Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Americans Were Receiving Information About The Government From Sources Other Than The Government

The Filing

WASHINGTON. Less than one month into his first term, President Donald J. Trump moved Friday to formally reclassify the country's largest newspapers and broadcast networks as enemies of the American people, resolving a long-standing concern that citizens had been receiving information about the government from sources other than the government.

"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People," the President wrote in a statement his communications staff confirmed would function as standing media policy for the remainder of the term. Officials noted that the designation carried no legal force whatsoever, a feature Trump was said to prize, as it allowed the phrase to be applied to any outlet, on any day, in response to any story, without the inconvenience of review.

According to sources within the administration, the reclassification was intended chiefly as a labor-saving measure. "Before this, every unfavorable story had to be addressed on its own terms, which took time," said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Now the President can simply note that the report originated with the enemy, and the matter is closed. It is, in a sense, a single rebuttal prepared in advance for everything."

The arrangement proved durable. Over the course of the term, independent fact-checkers documented more than 30,000 false or misleading claims made by the President himself, a total the White House characterized as 30,000 separate occasions on which the enemy press had declined to agree with him. Administration officials stressed that the figure said nothing about the President and a great deal about the outlets keeping count.

Press-freedom organizations observed that the phrase "enemy of the people" carried a documented history, having served as a favored instrument of twentieth-century authoritarian governments against their own citizens. Several members of the President's own party raised objections to the language. The President responded by continuing to use it, reasoning, aides said, that a phrase strong enough to alarm historians was strong enough to be worth keeping.

At press time, the President was reviewing a list of reporters whose questions had displeased him in order to determine which remaining freedoms of the press he was still constitutionally obligated to tolerate.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who acquired a single reusable response to all unfavorable coverage and applied it for the better part of two presidential terms.
§The Trump re-election campaign, which converted hostility toward the press into one of its most reliable fundraising appeals and rally segments.
§Cable news networks, which discovered that continuous on-air conflict with the President produced some of the highest sustained ratings in the industry's history.
§Partisan and talk-radio media, whose audiences expanded as mainstream outlets were recast for viewers as a hostile faction rather than a source.
§Social media platforms, which monetized the engagement generated by the President's running campaign against the news.
§Authoritarian governments abroad, which gained an American precedent for branding their own journalists enemies of the state, and proceeded to cite it.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment