Last night Brian Williams interviewed presidential historian John Meacham. They discussed how Trump was turning his base against journalists. The opinion piece by conservative New York Times writer Bret Stephens was shown on the screen.
In his essay, Bret Stephens expressed grave concern about how Trump was inciting his base to turn their rage towards the press. They highlight the last sentence.
Stephens got a threatening message after he published a column defending ABC’s firing of Roseanne Barr for a racist tweet. He wrote that perhaps the reason “Trump voters are so frequently the subject of caricature, is that they so frequently conform to type.” This is the message:
“Hey Bret, what do you think? Do you think the pen is mightier than the sword, or that the AR is mightier than the pen? I don’t carry an AR but once we start shooting you fuckers you aren’t going to pop off like you do now. You’re worthless, the press is the enemy of the United States people and, you know what, rather than me shoot you, I hope a Mexican and, even better yet, I hope a n—r shoots you in the head, dead. I hope a n—r shoots you in the head, dead (rhythmically repeating the last sentence eight more times) Have a nice day, n—r lover.”
Here’s yesterday’s OpEd:
He doesn’t mention the word blood until the last paragraph:
Yet for every 1,000 or so Trump supporters whose contempt for the press rises only as far as their middle fingers, a few will be people like my caller. Of that few, how many are ready to take the next fatal step? In the age of the active shooter, the number isn’t zero.
Should that happen — when that happens — and journalists are dead because some nut thinks he’s doing the president’s bidding against the fifth column that is the media, what will Trump’s supporters say? No, the president is not coyly urging his supporters to murder reporters, like Henry II trying to rid himself of a turbulent priest. But neither is he the child who played with a loaded gun and knew not what he did.
Donald Trump’s more sophisticated defenders have long since mastered the art of pretending that the only thing that matters with his presidency is what it does, not what he says. But not all of the president’s defenders are quite as sophisticated. Some of them didn’t get the memo about taking Trump seriously but not literally. A few hear the phrase “enemy of the people” and are prepared to take the words to their logical conclusion.
Is my caller one of them? I can’t say. But what should be clear is this: We are approaching a day when blood on the newsroom floor will be blood on the president’s hands.
There were other descriptions Stephens could have used, but he decided to use two phrases with the word “blood” so it would evoke an image, albeit a gruesome mental picture, but still a realistic one.
What he wrote is not hyperbole because he did mean it to be taken literally. However, he could have written something less evocative to express this fear. What do you think?
Update: To be clear about my opinion, I voted 1 on the poll. I think there are times when the strongest possible words are appropriate. This is one of them.