Three days after Donald Trump announced a new policy banning journalists from MS NOW (my employer), CNN and Politico from the White House, quite literally referring to his policy as “the ban on the free press,” the three news organizations filed a federal lawsuit against the president and several top administration officials challenging the unprecedented move.
Time will tell what becomes of the case, but hours after its filing, the president published a related item to his social media platform, effectively predicting a defeat and vowing to “go for appeal.”
But that’s not what stood out for me. Rather, what struck me as notable was the phrasing that followed. From the online statement:
[W]e’ll go for appeal because Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown “sources,” shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World.
Roughly seven hours earlier, after equating news organizations he dislikes with “cancer,” he also described journalism he disapproves of as “a threat to our National Security.”
A day earlier, the president tried to rebrand his “triumphal arch” as a “top grade Military Complex,” which he said he intends to complete “for National Security purposes.”
If the phrasing seemed at all familiar, it’s not your imagination.
- In December, after the administration took new steps to destroy the wind energy industry, with moves that even some of the president’s allies saw as radical, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the move was necessary “due to national security risks.”
- Around the same time, Trump renewed his effort to annex Greenland and told reporters, “We need Greenland for national security.”
- As part of a weird online harangue against The New York Times, the president justified his offensive by claiming that the newspaper is “a serious threat to the National Security of our Nation.”
- The White House tried to defend its trade tariffs agenda in part by pointing to “national security” concerns.
- When administration officials decided to ignore protections for endangered species and allow additional oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, they justified the move on national security grounds.
- When the president targeted collective bargaining contracts for hundreds of thousands of federal employees, the White House defended the decision by saying their functions touch on national security.
With increasing frequency, in other words, the White House sees “national security” as the answer to every question. (I’m tempted to describe it as officials’ “Trump card,” though that might be a little too on the nose.)
The political implications are unsubtle: No prominent voices in the American political mainstream would deliberately choose to undermine the nation’s national security needs. So when the president and his administration insist that one of their goals is necessary for national security reasons, it’s intended to shut down debate.
At least, that’s the idea. Part of the problem in these cases is that there’s little reason to accept such claims at face value. The other part of the problem is that the list keeps metastasizing to the point that it’s difficult to take the go-to justification seriously.
Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, told the Times in April, “When you look under the hood, they’re fake national security emergencies. This is a power grab.”
Five months later, the quote resonates for a reason.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
The post For Trump, ‘national security’ remains the answer to every question appeared first on MS NOW.
