AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. In the United States, protests broke out around the country Monday as the 538 electors of the Electoral College met in their respective state capitals and decisively voted to make Donald Trump the 45th president of the United States. Trump received 304 votes, well over the threshold of 270 necessary for him to become the next president. His Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, won 227 votes. Trump is scheduled to be sworn in as president one month from today, on January 20th.
We spend the rest of the hour with Robert Reich, who served as labor secretary under President Bill Clinton. Reich, who now teaches at University of California, Berkeley, has emerged as one of Donald Trump’s most vocal critics. He recently wrote a piece headlined "Trump’s Seven Techniques to Control the Media." I interviewed him yesterday and began by asking him what he thinks Donald Trump represents.
ROBERT REICH: Well, Donald Trump, besides, in my view, not being qualified to be president and, actually, on the campaign trail and even after the campaign was over advocating, legitimizing and enabling people to be quite hateful in America, if they were already leaning in that direction, Donald Trump also does not have any understanding of a democracy. And if anything, his leanings are toward tyranny. And by "tyranny," I simply mean someone who absorbs the trappings of power but doesn’t understand that he, in a democracy, is a public servant. He is working for us; we are not working for him. And in many ways, Donald Trump seems to be indifferent, at best, to the democratic process. He, for example, treats the press—and we need a free and independent press. Every democracy requires a free and independent press to report on what the powerful are doing. Trump continues to denigrate the press and to bypass it whenever he has any opportunity.
AMY GOODMAN: So, specifically get into this issue of the press. You wrote a fascinating piece saying, as you’ve said now, "Democracy depends on an independent press, which is why all tyrants try to squelch it. They use seven techniques that, worryingly, President-elect Donald Trump already employs." Go in detail into these seven techniques, beginning with berating the media.
ROBERT REICH: Donald Trump has, almost from the beginning of his campaign, and certainly in the—and he’s continued it—in the post-election period, to denigrate and berate the media. He holds rallies, and he talks about the dishonest media. He uses adjectives like "scum" and "scoundrel" to describe the media. He picks out individual members of the press who have criticized him, and talks about them in very critical terms or mocks them. This is not the habit of a democratic—democratically elected president. We’ve had presidents who have been upset by particular reports. Harry Truman, for example, was very upset when his—when the media reported—a particular reporter criticized his daughter’s singing, and he had some quite stern words about that reporter. But we’ve never before had a president or president-elect who has taken the media on so directly and so negatively and tried to plant in the public’s mind—and I think this is the real danger, Amy—trying to plant in the public’s mind the notion that the press is the enemy itself. If the public doesn’t believe in a free and independent press, then we’re in a kind of fact-free universe, because—and also a president is immune from criticism. And I think that’s, consciously or not, what Donald Trump is seeking.
AMY GOODMAN: Your number two point of techniques that Trump has used to control the media, "Blacklist critical media." During the campaign, he blacklisted news outlets, like pulling The Washington Post's credentials. I was surprised at the time that other reporters on the campaign trail covering Trump didn't jointly say, "If they are not allowed in, we will not report on you. We will not go in, either."
ROBERT REICH: I was surprised, as well. And what the media certainly needs to do is stand up for itself and stand up for other members of the media. Now, I understand media—you know, the situation today is very competitive, and there are a lot of media outlets that are worried about losing readership and so forth. But it is very important for the media to stand for a free and independent media. He’s announced, for example, that his White House press room, when and if he ever has a news conference, will be—no longer be assigned. The media will no longer be assigned of seats. They will be—they will actually be assigned—those seats will be assigned by the White House press room, not by the media who cover the White House. This may seem like a small detail.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re saying by Trump’s people. No, it’s not a small detail at all, but you’re saying by Trump’s detail—
ROBERT REICH: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —and not the White House Press Association.
ROBERT REICH: Exactly. Instead the White House Press Association, Trump’s own office, his own detail, will be assigning those seats. And there, again, is a dangerous precedent, in terms of undermining the freedom and the independence of the press. Donald Trump looks at the press the same way he looks at everything else, "the art of the deal." If he can strike a deal that will give the press something, or a particular member of the press or particular newspaper or news outlet an advantage, then he expects something in return, in terms of favorable coverage. But that’s not the way it’s supposed to work in the United States or in any democracy. That’s why we have a strict demarcation between the press and those in power.
AMY GOODMAN: Number three in your list of seven techniques to control the media, "Turning the public against the media." I want to go to a clip of Donald Trump.
DONALD TRUMP: You know my opinion of the media. It’s very low. ... The press are liars. They’re terrible people. ... And the media—look at all those people back there: scavengers. They’re like scavengers. ... Show 'em the crowd, press. Show ’em the crowd. Show ’em the crowd. Look, they're not turning the cameras. They don’t even turn the cameras. They don’t even turn the cameras, because, you know what, they’re very dishonest people. ... Disgusting reporters, horrible people. Sure, some are nice. ... They’re scum, absolute scum. Remember that. Scum.
AMY GOODMAN: So you have Trump referring to the media as "lying," "dishonest," "disgusting," "scum." And then you point out, for example, questioning the press’s motives, like talking about The Washington Post’s publisher, Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon. Talk about that.
ROBERT REICH: Again, this is unprecedented. We have a president-elect of the United States who comes up with ulterior motives for why a major news outlet, like The Washington Post, might be critical of him. He says Jeff Bezos, who is the publisher of The Washington Post, also from Amazon, is somehow worried about an antitrust action and therefore doesn’t want Trump to be president or didn’t want Trump to be president, is worried about Trump. This finding of ulterior motives, of assigning particular strange and irrelevant reasons why an outpost of the press might actually be criticizing Donald Trump is an effort, it seems to me, to undermine the credibility of the press, to cause the public to doubt what they are reading.
And Donald Trump, remember, lives in a fact-free universe. This is somebody who, even after the election, has said that, for example, he won by a landslide, when we know that he won—he didn’t win by a landslide; in fact, Hillary Clinton came out with almost 3 million more votes, popular votes, than Donald Trump. He says there was massive voter fraud. We know there—there was no evidence of massive voter fraud. He says that the homicide rate is up 45 percent. We know that the homicide rate is actually down 50 percent. But if in a fact-free world, unless the free press, unless we have a media that is capable of correcting the record, then we have a president who can say almost anything to justify whatever he wants to do. That, again, is a very, very dangerous situation in a democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: As you point out, you said that Jeffrey Bezos, the publisher of The Washington Post, the founder of Amazon—Donald Trump said The Washington Post wrote negative things about him because Bezos, quote, "thinks I would go after him for antitrust."
ROBERT REICH: When Donald Trump goes after Jeffrey Bezos, the publisher of The Washington Post, because of some—some notion that Amazon and Bezos are worried about a possible antitrust action that Trump might inspire, that is designed to undermine the credibility, in the public’s mind, of anything that The Washington Post might publish. It is an absurd allegation. There is no reason to believe that the Post's reporting turns upon Jeff Bezos's concern about Amazon and any antitrust issues. But, you see, by creating this kind of conspiracy theory or this kind of paranoid notion about the press and planting it in the public’s mind, the public, or at least a portion of the public, is led to think that anything that The Washington Post, or another paper whose credibility the president-elect tries to undermine, says is [not] justified or is [not] true. And again, that is terribly dangerous in a democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Or he might be threatening the reverse. By saying that, he’s saying, "I could go after him on issues of antitrust."
ROBERT REICH: Absolutely. He’s signaling to the press that he also has the power, whether it’s antitrust or it is the IRS or the FBI or whatever, whatever he is going to be directly or indirectly in command of, he is also signaling to the press that he has that kind of power.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read to you something from Politico. It says, "Donald Trump’s campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage, his son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives Friday in Manhattan. Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks. In exchange, Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary, Kushner said." Your concerns about this, Robert Reich?
ROBERT REICH: Well, every president in every press room in every White House does make tacit—has tacit understandings with the press. You know, you get this interview with the president if—and it will be an exclusive interview, but—and we’re not going to allow anybody else to have that interview, but you’ve got to—you’ve got to give him that time to say his piece. That’s not unusual. What’s very unusual, though, is when a White House strikes a deal with a news outlet not to comment on what the president might be saying at a rally or any other event. That basically is a gag order. I mean, that is an agreement by the press not to have an opinion, not to express itself, not to point out to the public anything, not to even provide any facts to the public that might be important in terms of understanding the context of a presidential event or what a president says. That, again, is terribly dangerous in a democracy. It actually creates—it undermines the independence and the freedom of the press.
AMY GOODMAN: In number four of "Trump’s Seven Techniques to Control the Media," you talk about condemning satirical or critical comments. I wanted to go to a clip of Saturday Night Live.
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