The publisher of the New York Times, AG Sulzberger Jr, recently confronted Trump with these concerns. The president’s predictable response was to focus on his own personal grievances. When asked about the role of a free press, Trump said that its job was to be fair, but the president’s idea of fair, the paper wryly noted, was “almost always in line with what he considers flattering.”
At the end of the meeting, Trump made a plea to Sulzberger Jr. “I came from Jamaica, Queens, and became president of the United States. I’m sort of entitled to a great story—just one—from my newspaper.”
His newspaper. See, he doesn’t hate the free press. He just hates not being loved by it. It doesn’t bode well for press freedom that there’s nothing there to love.