Sustaining independent media - Trump is the best case for media aid

PRESIDENT Trump’s relentless, dishonest attacks on media might be seen as a back-handed compliment to those who report on his inanities, ineptitude, and his disdain for much that is good in our world but far too many of his supporters swallow the Barnum and Bailey harrumph hook, line, and sinker to make that indulgence possible.

Stalin and Mao used terror to silence opposition but Trump, realising he cannot yet go as far as Turkey’s Islamic strongman masquerading as a democrat, President Recep Erdogan, and close troublesome media, must play a different, far more insidious card.

Mr Trump’s paranoid accusations, once mildly entertaining because they were a novel expression of a deep insecurity in such a very wealthy (inherited) man, are part of a campaign to intimidate those who would challenge his inner circle’s ambitions.