Are fear, intimidation the Trump Doctrine?

In attacks on press, prez is parroting autocrats

The press is the “enemy of the American People.” I’ve heard that kind of talk before. It’s a page right out of the Autocrat’s Handbook.

Disparage the free press, and then go after the judges. Well, I guess it doesn’t need to be in that order.

But delegitimizing these two institutions, the judiciary and the press, vital to our constitutional democracy, is a strategy used successfully by Vladimir Putin in Russia, and more recently by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. Leaders admired by our president? Who knows for sure.

But one thing is certain, our institutions — grounded in the U.S. Constitution and a deep commitment to the rule of law — have in the past proven to be stronger here than over there. I pray that continues to be the case.

The use of fear is a powerful tool, of course, and fear of “terrorism” is its modern cudgel. In Turkey the Erdogan regime labels critics of the government as “giving aid to terrorists,” and proceeds to destroy any media outlet that dares print, publish or speak such things. More recently the regime has dismissed at least 140,000 teachers, public servants and police, and detained thousands of judges, prosecutors and lawyers whom Erdogan suspects might have been associated in some remote way with a political opponent (formerly an ally) who he has now labeled a “terrorist.”

In Turkey it is also a crime to insult the president, and truth is not a defense. Erdogan has used that law to prosecute hundreds of his critics.

President Trump has also begun his administration by beating the terrorism drum, hastily barring Syrian refugees (among others) fleeing the worst oppression in recent time, from sanctuary in this country. And woe be it to any “so-called” judge who points out that in the administration’s haste to issue an “order” capitalizing on the fear that a terrorist may be among those refugees, no one seems to have looked at the Constitution or considered the chaotic effect it would have on thousands of families, educational institutions and our medical research and high-tech industries.

“Fake news” has become the administration’s new mantra. Fake news seems to be any news that is critical of the president or his administration, and anything contradicting what he says or believes. Thankfully we haven’t sunk to the level of prosecuting those who contradict the president’s “facts,” but allusions to changing the libel laws are creeping into his lexicon, and are plainly intended to have a chilling effect.

I have traveled to many countries to work on rule of law issues, and efforts to increase public trust and confidence in government. I have also helped host dozens of delegations of judges, journalists, lawyers and government officials from around the world here in Boston exploring the same. All that I have learned and observed confirms what American jurists and scholars (both liberal and conservative) have recognized for more than a century — a free press and an independent judiciary are indispensable to a free society. And, importantly, they are also interdependent.

As Felix Frankfurter put it, “The freedom of the press presupposes an independent judiciary through which that freedom may, if necessary, be vindicated. And one of the potent means for assuring judges their independence is a free press.” Or as Chief Justice Warren Burger observed, “Journalistic independence and judicial independence have served for two centuries to maintain our unique American system of orderly liberty,” and these two institutions provide “lateral support” for each other, so that “any force that can destroy the one can probably destroy the other.”

Even more recently Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer eloquently expressed it this way:

“A free press is necessary to narrate to the public what is being done by those in power, to provide them with the information necessary to vote and to make political decisions in an intelligent way. An independent judicial power is necessary to guarantee the continuing existence of a free press, and to ensure that those in power cannot, in practice strip citizens of the freedoms that, in principle, are guaranteed by a constitution.”

So lawyers, judges and journalists of America stay strong and resolute in defense of our Constitution. We have a responsibility to do so.