Editorial elmundo.es
Donald Trump wants journalists who exercise professional secrecy – that is, who do not reveal their sources, a totally institutionalized practice in all countries with freedom of expression – to go to jail and be raped there.
This is what the former US president said at a rally in the state of Ohio, in support of the investor and author of the best-seller Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance, who is running for the Senate in the elections held this Tuesday. At the event, Trump commented on the anonymous leak to the media of the Supreme Court ruling that opened the door for abortion to be repealed in many states in the United States, and wondered why the person who violated the rules of the most important judicial body in the country. It was then that the former president suggested his doctrine on freedom of expression, which Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, among other prominent world leaders, are likely to share.
“It’s very easy: you tell the journalist ‘who is it?'” Trump said of the identity of the source. “And the journalist has two options: tell you or not. If the journalist doesn’t want to tell you, the journalist goes to jail. And when the journalist knows that they are going to ‘marry’ him in two days with a prisoner who is extremely strong, tough, and bad, the journalist, or the journalist, is going to tell you, “Look, I think I’m going to give you the information, this is the one who told me, get me the hell out of here »», he concluded.
Trump’s doctrine of putting freedom of information prisoners in the same cell as common prisoners has been widely used by the Cuba of Fidel Castro, and Russia – both in the Soviet era and in the Putin era – with excellent results for both regimes. Obviously, neither communist Cuba nor the Soviet Union nor Russia are democracies, but that seems to be the model that Trump presents to his followers. Without professional secrecy, for example, there would have been no investigation of the Watergatenor, neither, of the GAL or of Filesa in Spain. The ‘Panama papers’ would never have been disclosed, the fraud of the Theranos company would never have been discovered, and the torture carried out by US soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq would never have been revealed. In other words: there would be no freedom of the press.
To do this, it has their acquiescence and the silence of society and opinion leaders. Not a single Republican has criticized his remarks. That’s understandable given the former president’s support among Republican voters. Trump himself insulted JD Vance in his presence in September, at another rally in Ohio, when he said that the Senate candidate “is licking my ass.” Vance apparently considers that a compliment, given that he has once again invited Trump to campaign for him. This is how Trump treats his allies and how they tolerate him. In relation to his enemies, the former president gave another example of his delicacy on Monday, by calling the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, whose husband was the victim of an attack by a Trump supporter who he fractured his skull to hammer blows. The former head of state and government explained at the rally the reasons for the insult against Pelosi, whose position is the third most institutionally relevant in the United States: “he impeached me twice.”
Trump has become the protagonist of the closing of the campaign of the legislative elections of the United States. The former president has once again given a display about how to capture media attention to the detriment not only of his rivals, but also of his own allies, with the declaration that he will make “a very big announcement” on Tuesday of the week that comes.
That claim has fueled speculation about a new Trump presidential campaign, which has the support of Republican voters, though not party leaders. So Tuesday’s election has become, with just one sentence from Trump, part of the debate over his political future.
