In Trump's America, the independent press would become the enemy
Imagine a president who challenges the most important newspaper in the country every single day, depicts it as the state’s main political rival, and even calls it "dictatorial" and "Nazi". Think of a president who in order to contest critical media accounts uses state money to promote a new,"friendly" media in various guises (television, press and internet). Consider a president who changes the law with the explicit aim of targeting media critics, and especially newspapers.
All this could in the near future become the trademark of a Donald Trump presidency. The candidate has already made newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times, and cable news channels like CNN, among his main adversaries in the campaign. What adds to the prospect is that this scenario has happened before.
It resembles events in the last decade in Argentina under the populist administrations of Néstor Kirchner (2003-07) and his wife, from 2010 widow, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-15). The pattern also applies to other significant moments when populism switches from opposition to government: witness the cases of Juan Peron’s Argentina after 1945, and more recently Turkey, Venezuela, Ecuador and Russia.
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