And so it begins...the first step to a dictatorship has been taken - obstructing "unfavorable" news reporters and their employers. Next will be outright censorship; then 'disappearances'.

Write to your Senators and Congress person for a Special Prosecutor to investigate Trumps taxes, campaign and business for ties to Russia and Conflicts of Interest. We have a POTUS that was not vetted in any way. If he will not release his taxes, to the public, a Special Prosecutor will be able to look at them and decide for us.

Actually, this is the second step, but I agree with your statement. The first step was 'telling' the news media what to say & what NOT to say. Simply not reporting important information and stories wasn't enough, so now this.

The day after the election I said "These next four years will come to be known as the rape of America." Trump and his plunder monkeys will take all they want, well, all they can get. With all the 9/11 inspired unconstitutional laws already on the books (and more to come, I'm sure), the militarization of the police, the huge new capacity to retain large numbers of people that now exists and Trump's apparent distain for the Constitution, the already occuring disappearences are sure to worsen dramatically.

It may not be fashionable but Trumps's assertion of fake news is correct based upon what I observe on CBS, ABC and NBC evening news shows. I watch them rarely but when I do the lead stories from the three major networks are almost always the same and it is about Trump, Trump, and more Trump. The House or the Senate is rarely discussed unless it is about Russia. And when was the last time there was an in depth interview done by broadcaster questioning a liberal or conservative or moderate senator, congressperson about Social Security, automation in the workplace, climate change, etc, real wage regression, The FED, etc.?So yes, it is fake news but they aren't lying per se. They just are providing pablum for the masses or magician tricks so the audience watches the shiny object while the real news isn't reported or worst distorted so we have the feel good story at the end of the program.

CNN, MSNBC, Fox, are not any better. Each has their own agenda. If I must watch TV News I'll watch PBS or BBC. I prefer to get my news from multiple sources so I am not in the echo chamber. I also prefer to read the news instead of someone reading to me as if I were a child.

What we are watching is the establishment of a fascist dictatorship. The Bannon administration is getting no pushback from the congress or senate; even the ones who were highly critical of Trump as a candidate started lining up to kiss his ass as soon as he became president. Bannon has announced as one of their priority projects the neutering of the Judiciary so that they don't question every decision the president makes. And, of course, the Supreme Court will soon be permanently populated with enough Trump "yes" people to insure that no interference is encountered from that front for the next several decades. So all they really need to do now is to squash the free press. That is a main priority on every dictator's to-do list. Look it up.

We will soon have a dictator of the temperament of a Nero or a Caligula with unchecked power running the US. People keep comparing Trump to Hitler. Trump hasn't a fifth the brain power of an Adolf Hitler (who wasn't himself exactly a genius). Trump by himself is an undifferentiated blob of sociopathic narcissism. He needs Bannon to lend him form and direction. Bannon serves as a nozzle to direct Trump’s high pressure juvenile vitriol in semi-coherent politically philosophical streams so that Trump doesn't’t always come across as a toddler throwing a hissy fit.

We don't have the will and the wherewithal (you need both) in any entity or institution to oppose the Trump regime. Half of the country thinks what's happening is just great and they're the ones with their hands on the controls.

Trump understands the difference between propaganda Fox fake news, the kind he promotes, verses the real news he wants to suppress....the kind that merely holds a mirror up to the truth of his fascist chaos.

When hasn't Trump pulled the 180 on truth like this? His best defense is always distraction with offense. You can rest assured that when he's pointing his finger about anything, he and his accomplices have already committed that very crime. A good example was his accusation of voter fraud, simply meant to distract attention away from the election fraud that put the Teapublicans in power to begin with.

Network news is at best brief with very little content of any value, but even that sheds too much light on the Trump/Teapublican lie unfolding before us.

The first comment I made the morning after the election was...the Teapublican Party will no longer be able to fly under the radar and hide its intent. That is unless the media is silenced as in third world overthrows....which is what we are seeing.

I guess the future all depends on how much citizens and our so called free press are willing to give up their first amendment rights. This also includes employees of the CIA and FBI. They can't all be right-wing extremists like Comey. Someone needs to be a true american patriot and do the right thing. The treason is no secret.....could it be more obvious?

Who could have guessed it would be "W" to come to the aid of the Press?!! He's mellowed a little, I guess, since his time in Office. I wish the current administration would take heed from "W"'s words, but with someone like the present troll in the White House, and everyone else afraid of him and the bridge under which he lives, I doubt anyone will take heed.

The Trump carnival is a distraction that many people see through, including some domestic and international news outlets.

This shift to authoritarianism is an attack on American democracy by the GOP, not just the Trump gang of punks.

This all spells the need to break the GOP's hold on American politics. Its also time to dismantle the bi-polar political cycle, by which we have Republican presidents take power, go to war and empty the treasury, with little regard to environmental consequences, and then a Demicrat in the White House that tries to implement economic recovery and environmental protection. This flip flopping is a total ease of resources. Education, civil rights, scientific research, healthcare, economic growth, international relations, environmental protections and wildlife sanctuaries all suffer. It's time to change the system for real.

To do all this requires political engineering, driven by popular demand. If enough Americans leave their bubble of comfortable lives to resist shifts to Authoritarianism and create a new political order, this can happen. If not (the more likely scenario), things will get worse and worse until an impoverished population will reach a breaking point and rebel. The result of this whole process will likely be the dismantling of the United States.

In the early twentieth century, before Fox Faux News and the Republican bread-and-circus clown show, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey put on "The Greatest Show on Earth." Now, F*ckface Von Clownstick & Co plays to an audience of wingnuts dumber than a bag of square marbles who find their relaxation and enjoyment in nothing more inspiring than a cheesy lounge-lizard act.

"Fake news" is the drool dripping off the orange clown's puffy slack jowls every moment of every day. "Corporate news" is the spittoon from which dumb-downed Americans gladly slurp and which headlined this fool all through the primary and the general election seasons with two billion dollars of free face time -- a mugshot that makes babies cry and mothers vomit.

Let's have fun with quotes:

"I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right."

"There's no such thing as bad publicity."

“No publicity is bad publicity”

"There's a sucker born every minute."

This is not about Thom, or liberals, or even the media; it is about a "so-called" president who constantly lies to the people, which makes him -- not the media -- the "enemy of the people!" And, it's about the so-called patriotic Americans dumb enough to believe him.

Al Franken sooo needs to write a sequel to his 2003 book, "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them."

The Cheeto Benito shit show broke the all-time record with 100 lies in 36 days:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-administration-lies-100_us_58ac7a0fe4b02a1e7dac3ca6

http://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/18/donald-trump-first-month-of-lies-video

Any time!

:--))