Trump is happy to retweet and praise questionable news sources that are flattering to him, all while insisting that respected news outlets are “fake news” that should have credentials pulled. One of Trump’s favorite news outlets, The Drudge Report, is calling him out on his latest Twitter tantrum about restricting the freedom of the press.
Matt Drudge, founder of the right-wing outlet famous for reporting such hard-hitting news as Bill Clinton’s illegitimate black son and the “inside job” by the government on 9/11, hit back at Trump on Twitter, saying that the “mop up is going to be excruciating.”
Of course, Drudge also stuck to the Trump playlist of saying that while a Republican did something wrong, Democrats have done it too and worse, but calling out Trump is not routine for the site nor its founder. On this issue, Drudge is most certainly correct: the First Amendment must be respected and fake news called out.
That, of course, is exactly what Democrats did in the Senate during the period between Trump’s election and his inauguration thanks to sites like Breitbart and The Drudge Report and their inspiration of thousands of fake news sites bent on pushing false stories to influence political campaigns by Russian government operatives. Don’t look for Drudge to make that distinction, though.
Trump’s tweets calling for this violation of the U.S. Constitution as well as his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey during which he called for journalists who leak information to be imprisoned should alarm everyone. Drudge’s Twitter followers seemed to believe that only outlets that challenged conservative talking points should be eligible for the “fake news” monitor and that Trump’s administration were within their rights to restrict them. While many of the comments were disheartening, a few bright spots of reason could also be found.
See some of those comments below:
Featured image via Getty/Chip Somodevilla
