http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/trumps-pipe-bombs-mainstream-media-clean-up-act.html?fbclid=IwAR36N6fIHwD7AAB25Yky-ALByPn3AVMiN5A1fZSau0ULLdoahbbGxsQv8DU
"Trump persisted in manipulating the media to build his image as a brilliant deal maker by publishing lies so wild the reporters he used couldn’t fathom them. (Reporter Jonathan Greenberg later recounted one such episode, in which Trump lied his way onto the Forbes 400.) Eventually almost all of Trump’s deals collapsed, and his one remaining marketable asset was the media-created perception that he was a brilliant businessman. The corollary to Trump’s expectation that the news media unquestioningly transmit his lies is his demand that it refrain from criticism of any kind. He was fanatical about intimidating reporters with legal threats. He would wring apologies out of any skeptics, or even get them fired — not despite the fact the criticism was true but because it was true. In his incarnation as a political candidate, Trump has mostly lost his ability to intimidate the media with legal threats. (Politicians have a prohibitively high standard for libel in the United States.) But his expectation and worldview are the same. Any news outlet not controlled by his loyalists is “fake news” and an “enemy of the people.” It must “clean up its act” — or else. Trump can’t literally attack reporters, though he can praise allies who do. The mail-bomb threats are the leverage he craves. They are the threat that can make good on his demand, the consequence facing the media for failing to submit to his orders. It is a supreme irony that Trump used his speech last night to delegitimize criticism. “No one should carelessly compare political opponents to historical villains.” But the issue is that Trump, in his psychological makeup and aspirations, is precisely such a historical villain."
