Yet to First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who had raised warning flags against previous presidents of both parties for trying to muzzle the media, Trump’s verbal assaults were sufficiently chilling to elicit concern. “Never has any U.S. president been so hostile to the press,” he told me, “spoken of it in such a repeatedly defamatory and accusatory manner, and sought as a matter of policy—of design—to persuade the public (or even his 40 percent of the public) to disbelieve it and to reject its factual revelations as false. This is new in our history.”
