But the president’s tweet was another sign of democratic backsliding, a term used in political science to describe the erosion of institutions that support democracy.
His unfounded tweets about mail ballots and other issues have cast doubt on the legitimacy of this fall’s election and have been widely criticized. Their recklessness remains one of the most important stories for the American press.
Part of this behavior was predictable from the start. That is why I remembered Sunday January 22, 2017 and the importance of believing in your own eyes and ears.
Anchoring a weekly news show like CNN’s “Trusted Sources” can be weird at times. You have one chance per week and you have to make it count. So, in late 2016 and early 2017, I repeatedly mentioned the president-elect’s authoritarian tactics, primarily regarding his attacks on the media.
When I invoked the scourge of autocracy and interviewed reporters who described what it’s like to work in authoritarian climates, right-wing blogs added to the ridicule.
Occasionally he would question me, as any journalist should. I researched my own scripts and segments for weaknesses.
Perhaps he was naive, since we knew his past as a businessman, he knew his willingness to say anything to promote himself and downgrade his rivals. But we still didn’t know how a Trump White House would work.
So I asked a lot of questions. “Will journalists stop trying to verify the facts?” (Fortunately they didn’t!) “Is that the goal: wear us out, wear us out?” (It seems that way.) “Who will you trust?”
I continued: “Does Trump light us with gas, trying to manipulate, make you doubt your own eyes? Do you know what gas lighting means?”
In retrospect, this is what the Trump years were all about: “What will you believe in? Will you and your neighbors just shrug or demand more honesty from your government?”
At the end of the segment, I said that my final questions were awkward, but that they needed to be asked. I said, “Do citizens in dictatorships recognize what is happening here and now? Are they looking at the first two days of the Trump administration and saying,” Is that what my leader does? What should we learn from them today? “
I felt like I was a little out of place. Maybe he had gone a little too far. Dictatorships? America’s democracy was strong. The President was completely new. I mean, the notion of delaying the election wasn’t floating! But he was already making non-American noises.
In February, I quoted from “How Democracies Die,” the 2018 book: “The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that the murderers of democracy use the same institutions of democracy, gradually, subtly, and even legally, to kill her. ” “
Regular critics came out of the joinery again and said the segment was an overreaction. This is how it always goes. But the democratic setback is real. It is one of the greatest stories of our time.
The point is not about me or my monologues, it is about believing in your own eyes and ears. We can see the story right in front of us. We can continue to ask questions, and now we can answer some of them.
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