KATY TUR (HOST): Yeah, we get it, You don't like us. Fine. But do you have to put our lives in danger? The president continues to call the press “the enemy of the people” even after four journalists and one sales assistant were shot dead in a Maryland newsroom by a man who was angry with what they factually reported about him, even after the publisher of The New York Times stressed to him in a private conversation that his words were putting journalists in mortal danger, even after CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta was shouted down and taunted at a rally the other night in Florida, and even after the president's own daughter, at least publicly, disagreed with her dad.
[BEGIN VIDEO]
MIKE ALLEN (AXIOS): Do you think that we're the enemy of the people?
IVANKA TRUMP (ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT): Sorry?
ALLEN: Do you think the media is the enemy of the people?
TRUMP: No, I do not.
[END VIDEO]
TUR: Good. I'm glad someone in the administration said this out loud, with a camera recording. I hope Ivanka implores him in private to tone it down as well because either the president doesn't get the problem or he does not care. Sadly, the harassment and threats are not stopping. Journalists get them every day. We've been getting them since the campaign, when then-candidate Trump urged the crowd to yell and scream at us. But what you saw and still see on TV, those boos and those taunts are only part of it.
What you do not see are the nasty letters or packages or emails, the threats of physical violence. “I hope you get raped and killed,” one person wrote to me just this week. “Raped and killed.” Not just me, but a couple of my female colleagues as well. And in case you want to argue that this has nothing to do with the president, the most recent note I got ended with “MAGA.”
So if anyone in the administration cares about the safety and security of journalists, the health of a free and unintimidated press and, by extension, our democracy as a whole, please say something to your boss, to your dad, to your commander-in-chief before it is too late.
