White House steps up war on journalists by naming ‘media perpetrator of the week’

The Trump administration is intensifying its war against the ‘fake news media’ by… ‘Media offender of the week’ page on the official White House website. The page with names of journalists from CBS News, The Boston Sphere And The independentis subtitled “Misleading. Biased. Exposed.”

Being referred to as “media offenders”. Boston sphere political producer Alyssa Vega, Independent White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg and senior Washington correspondent Eric Garcia, and CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes.

The journalists are accused of misrepresenting and exaggerating President Trump’s “calls for democratic accountability,” the page claims. “The media has misrepresented President Trump’s call for members of Congress to be held accountable for inciting sedition by saying he was calling for their ‘execution.’

‘That’s what they do. They are trying to suppress speech.”

The reporters handpicked by the White House had reported on six Democratic senators who were featured in a video released last week reminding members of the armed forces that they do not have to follow illegal orders — even if those orders come directly from the president.

“The threats to our Constitution come not just from abroad, but from here. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders,” the senators said in the video. “No one has to carry out orders that conflict with the law or our Constitution.”

President Trump has dismissed the video and suggested that lawmakers were guilty of sedition and should face the consequences. One of the six senators in the video, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, told ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday that the administration’s response to the video — including calls from the Pentagon to investigate Kelly — was intended to sow fear and stifle criticism.

“It’s straight out of the playbook, you know, the playbook of authoritarianism. That’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to suppress speech,” Kelly said. “Each of us has the right to express the First Amendment, and I think the president is violating it and he’s sending, he’s sending a pretty strong message. You don’t want to cross him, and your loyalty should be to him. That shouldn’t happen. It should always be to the Constitution.”

‘President Trump called for them to be held accountable’

On the White House media offenders page, the administration suggested that “Democrats and Fake News Media subversively suggested that President Trump had issued illegal orders to military personnel. Every order President Trump has issued has been lawful. It is dangerous for sitting members of Congress to incite insubordination in the U.S. military, and President Trump called for them to be held accountable.”

While the White House claimed that the senators in the video were “calling on service members to disobey their chain of command,” the video’s actual content said federal law does not allow members of the military to break the law, even if ordered to do so by a superior officer — or the commander in chief.

“Don’t give up ship,” Senator Elissa Slotkin said in the video.