The problem of the Presidential tweet is circular. At the beginning of
the Trump Presidency, it seemed that tweets might be a distraction or a
sideline, a deletable part of the record. Some journalists advocated not
covering the tweets at all. Rachel Maddow, of MSNBC, has practiced
ignoring the tweets and generally covering the White House “like a
silent movie,” to great ratings
success.
But tweets have consequences. Journalists get fired and professors get
placed on suspension for things posted on personal Twitter accounts. It seems absurd to
argue that the tweets of the most powerful man in the world have less
weight than those of ordinary professionals. The tweets of
@realDonaldTrump express what the President of the United States is
thinking, and that alone makes them noteworthy. On top of that, Trump
appears to think that he can govern by tweet.
He is not exactly wrong. Presidential tweets do make policy at least
some of the time. As we learned in the summer, after Trump
tweeted a ban on transgender people in the military, the Commander-in-Chief can give
commands in any manner he chooses. Trump is
unwilling, or unable, to consider the possibility that all of American
society doesn’t function like the military. So, if a tweet fails to
produce consequences, the President escalates, groping in the ether for
levers to exert the power of his displeasure.
Consider his N.F.L. Twitter sequence. He progressed from generalized
outrage to demanding that players who failed to stand during the
national anthem be fired, to focussing on an actual instrument of
federal
government:
“Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time
disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!” Less than
twenty-four hours later, he noted that the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger
Goodell, had sent out a letter urging all players to stand for the
anthem: “It’s about
time.” Perhaps Trump’s tax threat worked.
His Twitter attack on the news media has followed a similar trajectory:
a hundred and forty characters at a time, he searches for instruments of
power available to him. Prosecute leakers? Get the Senate Intelligence
Committee to go after
journalists?
And, finally,
today:
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what
point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”
The Federal Communications Commission is not the military, and Trump
can’t tell it what to do, by tweet or by any other means. And, as the
Times pointed out in a detailed
article that does the exact opposite of ignoring Trump’s tweet, NBC itself
doesn’t hold a broadcast license: its local affiliate stations do. That
shouldn’t come as a relief—battles over licenses in local markets are
conceivable, and Trump’s tweet can be interpreted as a call to wage those
battles. The Times reminded its readers that such a call is not
without precedent in American Presidential history: Richard Nixon
encouraged a business associate to challenge a license held by a
Washington Post–owned television station in Florida, and Nixon’s
Justice Department went after the three major networks on antitrust
grounds.
Laws and institutions designed for liberal democracy can be deployed to
restrict media freedom. That’s what modern-day autocrats do. Vladimir
Putin has used economic instruments against the press, from hostile
takeovers of media companies to libel suits that have bankrupted journalists
and entire news outlets. Silvio Berlusconi proposed one restrictive bill
after another—most didn’t pass, but they served to intimidate the
media—and he also called for boycotts of media outlets that were critical of him.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán did all that while also weaponizing friendly
tabloids to harass and discredit political opponents. And all autocrats
maintain dominance in the media by limiting and strategically
apportioning access.
Trump is testing the potential of these strategies. He and his Cabinet
members have transformed the rules of media access, shutting the press
out of the State Department almost entirely and treating White House
press briefings as daily battles with meddlesome reporters. Breitbart
and other Trumpian media outlets have harassed and spread outlandish
conspiracy theories about the President’s political opponents. But does
Trump have the power to take us, by tweet, into the previously
unimaginable territory of discussing whether the President can shut down
a television network? He just did.