Trump swipes 'enemy of the people' phrase from tyrants

Take a good look at all 45 presidents so far. Regardless of party, they all have one thing in common. From George Washington to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to Donald Trump, they all had their problems with the media.

Indeed, they all complained about their press coverage. But none of them hated – yes, hated! – the media like Donald Trump.

For Trump, it's an obsession. His ego has no bounds. Any story that does not talk about how wonderful he is sets him off. It's just more proof, in his mind, that the "very, very dishonest media" are out to get him, advancing their own political agenda and actually working for the opposition party.

Not only that. If media companies don't unabashedly praise Donald Trump, they might even be anti-American. On Friday, he told his 25 million Twitter followers: "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!"

Enemy of the people? Really? We all understand he doesn't like the media, but isn't that loaded phrase – notoriously used in the past by Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Mao and other tyrants – a little over the top? Not at all, insisted White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who argued Trump's use of the phrase is totally justified: "I think the president has been very clear that certain outlets have gone out of their way to not represent his record accurately, and it is a concern to him."

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The problem, of course, is that, in the demented world of Donald Trump, the only way to "represent his record accurately" is to report that he actually won the popular vote, if you subtract the 4 to 5 million who voted for Hillary illegally; that he would have won New Hampshire, if only Democrats had not bussed voters in from Massachusetts; that he got the biggest electoral vote total of any candidate since Ronald Reagan; and that his inauguration drew the biggest crowd ever to the Washington Mall. None of which is true.

Now, it would be easy to dismiss the charge "enemy of the people" as nothing more than the ranting of an egomaniac. And that's what a lot of people suggest the media should do. But I think that's a mistake for at least two reasons.

The first is that Trump's nonstop, baseless attacks on the media undermine one of our most important and most revered public institutions: a free and independent press, which is so fundamental to the workings of democracy that the Founders enshrined it in the very first amendment to the Constitution.

Of course, nobody likes reading critical stories. But other presidents have learned that it not only goes with the territory, it actually helps them do their job. In December 1962, President John F. Kennedy, who had his own run-ins with the press, called the media "an invaluable arm of the presidency." He told reporters: "Even though we never like it, even though we wish they didn't write it, even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt at all that we couldn't do the job at all in a free society without a very active press."

Secondly, Trump's attacks on the media embolden dictators in other countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia to continue their suppression of the media because, after all, if it's good enough for the United States, it's good enough for them. Who are we to criticize them for not recognizing freedom of the press when we don't, either?

As depressing as Trump's war on the media is, however, it's not all bad news. Ironically, Trump has sparked some of the best investigative reporting we've seen in this county since Watergate – on the Russian connection, on Trump's financial conflicts, and on his lies – from the "failing" New York Times and the Washington Post, which just adopted a new slogan: "Democracy dies in darkness."

It's also clear that the majority of the American people aren't buying his assault on the press. Asked in the latest Quinnipiac University poll whom they trust more "to tell you the truth about important issues," 52 percent chose the media over the president. Only his hardcore base of 37 percent chose Trump.

Even the cartoon character Pogo offers a glimmer of hope. Yes, his most famous line is "We have met the enemy, and he is us." But his second-most famous is: "Don't take life so serious, son. It ain't nohow permanent." No, and neither is Donald Trump. We in the media will continue to tell the truth.