EVEN THE PUBLISHER OF THE N.Y. TIMES CALLS TRUMP A “LIAR”

…The New York Times Newspaper

The president off Brazil has patterned his presidency after President Trump

There is a reason that the Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, is known as the, “Trump of the Tropics”.

Bolsonaro said the following this week: “Brazil and the United States stand side by side in their efforts to ensure liberties and respect to traditional family lifestyles, respect to God our creator, against the gender ideology or the politically correct attitudes and against fake news.”

However, a glossary may be helpful here, going back a few years, Bolsonaro was recorded saying the following:  “Respect to traditional family lifestyles” means “disrespect to LGBTQ lives.” “If a gay couple came to live in my building, my property will lose value. If they walk around holding hands, kissing, it will lose value! No one says that out of fear of being called a homophobe.  Politically correct attitudes mean ‘any views that deviate from authoritarian fearmongering’.  The vast majority of potential immigrants do not have good intentions.” 

Sure sounds like President Trump.

Bolsonaro also said the following in a Fox interview just this week. “They [the immigrants] do not intend to do the best, or do good to the US people.” And “fake news” means “news that reflects poorly on the Bolsonaro-Trump crowd.”

Now that sounds exactly like Donald J. Trump.

Global approval of US leadership has been tanking under President Trump.  This is according to recent Gallup surveys.  However, Trump appears content with his influence.  Here is a remark Trump made in a joint news conference with the Brazilian President: “I’m very proud to hear the president [Bolsonaro] use the term ‘fake news.”

As has been written before, “fake news” emerged in late 2016 to identify false stories frequently engineered for political ends through viral sharing. Trump co-opted the term before taking office, using it to describe all legitimate news reporting of negative comments on any of his actions.  Just as when he called CNN’s Jim Acosta “fake news” in January 2017, right after the network revealed that high-ranking national security officials had just briefed Trump on the infamous Steele / Russian dossier.

Since being elected, the president has used his Twitter account to establish “eminent domain” over the “fake news” definition.  Here is a recent Trump tweet for the proof:  “The Fake News Media has NEVER been more Dishonest or Corrupt than it is right now. There has never been a time like this in American History. Very exciting but also, very sad! Fake News is the absolute Enemy of the People and our Country itself!”

Bolsonaro has developed a template as a result of Trump’s advocacy.  Even before taking office, Bolsonaro declared war against his own country’s “fake news” media.  Here is a Reuters report from last November:  “With half a billion dollars in public-sector marketing budgets coming under his discretion, the fiery former Army captain [Bolsonaro] is threatening to slash ad buys with adversarial media groups, striking at the financial foundations of Brazil’s free press.”

Like Trump, Bolsonaro has dismissed investigative reporting as “fake news invented by a corrupt establishment", and his supporters have gone after individual journalists.  These threats are sending a chill through the country’s newsrooms.  Asked in a TV interview last week if he would respect press freedom even for his favorite target, Brazil’s largest daily circulation newspaper: Folha de S. Paulo, Bolsonaro’s answer was very negative:  “That newspaper is done! As far as I’m concerned with government advertising, press that acts like that, lying shamelessly, won’t have any support from the federal government.”

Kind of sounds like those comments that Trump makes about The New York Times and the Washington Post, when they write the truth about all of Trump’s lies.

There is documentary evidence that Trump is aware of the relationship between his own rhetoric and the threats to journalists across the globe.

This evidence comes from New York Times Publisher:  A.G. Sulzberger, who used two, face-to-face meetings with Trump over the past year, just to press him on this very topic.

“The concern I raised then was about his anti-press rhetoric — ‘fake news,’ ‘enemy of the people,'” Sultzberger told Trump at a meeting this Winter, while referring to a previous session with Trump. “At the time, I said I was concerned that it wasn’t just divisive, it was potentially dangerous and warned that I thought it could have consequences.  I feel like in the time since, we’ve started to see some of those consequences play out. We’ve seen, around the world, an unprecedented rise in attacks on journalists, threats to journalists.”

Sulzberger said that Trump sounded interested, and when Sulzberger praised his presidential predecessors for sticking up for press freedoms, the president said, “I think I am, too. I want to be.”

But, like so many other things that comes out of Trump’s mouth, that was a pure lie.

In fact, Trump wants to be the leader of a transcontinental, “fake news” army.

As is always with Donald J. Trump, Sulzberger shouldn’t have wasted his time.

Copyright G. Ater 2019