Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
Yes, he has. This behavior was cultivated in the 1980s and 1990s with the New York tabloids. Trump would troll them mercilessly because he loved the attention. Trump would actually call in and leave tips for the tabloids using the name John Barron (interesting he would later name his son Barron). The tabloids would call him for comment and he would flatly deny the claims and then threaten to sue if the information got out. He would routinely get into public spats with other celebrities and politicians in New York because it got him front page coverage. He's an egomaniac and his behaviors support that claim.
This is a very dangerous development. This is the act of an authoritarian and is an imminent threat to our democracy. When a leader gets to pick and choose who his press is, and then damns everything else as being non-credible, he is telling the people what to believe and how they should think. History is littered with tin-pot dictators who beat a similar drum. The difference between those tin-pot dictators and Trump is one of the strongest militaries in the world and a few thousand nukes.
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With respect to the bolded, Garry Kasparov's twitter is a gem in deconstructing authoritarian tendencies. It is also a pretty depressing read. He's basically predicted much of what Trump is doing. Unfortunately, his predictions are not because he was a Chess Grandmaster and being able to predict multiple movements ahead of time, but because he's seen this playbook play out before.