By If former President Donald Trump received some of the best news he’s gotten in a long time over the weekend, he certainly has chosen a strange way to celebrate it. On Sunday evening, Trump went on a bizarre rant about Comcast and MSNBC, saying they should be investigated “for treason.”
Former President Trump pledged to investigate Comcast, the parent company for NBC and MSNBC, if he were to win in 2024, the company “will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”
“They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Sunday.
“I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events,” the former President wrote.
Trump also rehashed a phrase he has often used for news media in the past, calling it the “enemy of the people.”
Multiple outlets noted that it is unclear what story on MSNBC sparked the tirade, but the message received thorough pushback.
In a statement, noted The Guardian, Andrew Bates, White House deputy press secretary, said: “President Biden swore an oath to uphold our constitution and protect American democracy. Freedom of the press is a fundamental constitutional right.
“To abuse presidential power and violate the constitutional rights of reporters would be an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law. Presidents must always defend Americans’ freedoms – never trample on them for selfish, small and dangerous political purposes.”
Elsewhere, Paul Farhi, media reporter for the Washington Post, pointed to Trump’s symbiotic relationship with outlets he professes to hate, given that only last week Trump was “the featured interview guest last week on Meet the Press, the signature Sunday morning news program on … NBC”.
Others noted that on Monday night, the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness for the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on Congress, which Trump incited, was due to be interviewed on MSNBC.
“Female political or media antagonists really cause blood to come pouring out of Trump’s eyes,” wrote Howard Fineman, a columnist and commentator.
Sounding a louder alarm, Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, said Trump had gone “full fascist” with an “unhinged Sunday-night rant.”
MSNBC and Comcast weren’t the only targets of Trump’s odd ranting over the weekend. He also called for the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to be executed.
The Atlantic explained: “Late Friday night, the former president of the United States—and a leading candidate to be the next president—insinuated that America’s top general deserves to be put to death.
That extraordinary sentence would be unthinkable in any other rich democracy. But Donald Trump, on his social-media network, Truth Social, wrote that Mark Milley’s phone call to reassure China in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” (The phone call was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.) Trump’s threats against Milley came after The Atlantic’s publication of a profile of Milley, by this magazine’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who detailed the ways in which Milley attempted to protect the Constitution from Trump.”
The attack from Trump is another example of the former president attacking someone today that he empowered while serving as president. Trump picked Milley to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 2018.
I am pleased to announce my nomination of four-star General Mark Milley, Chief of Staff of the United States Army – as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, replacing General Joe Dunford, who will be retiring….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2018
Milley has been strongly criticized for purposely undermining the authority of the presidency by working behind the scenes to undercut orders from President Trump that he disagreed with.
Both Milley’s actions and Trump’s latest rant are part of the vicious cycle of anti-democratic totalitarianism that has enveloped both hardcore Trump supporters and the left. Many liberals have come to justify anti-democratic forms of repression in the name of “stopping Trump’s fascism.”
The cycle goes like this: Trump will say something against conventional wisdom or go on a rant like the ones discussed in this article. That causes the left to justify consolidating their power over the bureaucracy, just like Milley justified his actions. This causes Trump to go on more rants, which then feeds the totalitarian left, often spurring on Biden to take dramatic actions, and on and on the cycle continues.
It often time seems that the winner of 2024 will be the party that commits to breaking this vicious cycle will win the White House.
[Read More: Latest News Has Dems Scrambling]
