PBS “On Democracy” Series Analyzes Trump’s Autocratic Tendencies in Second Term– www.newsbusters.org
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Excerpt:
The online title to the latest “On Democracy” segment on Monday’s PBS News Hour gave away the slant of the newly hatched series – fear porn to attract liberal viewers during the second Trump Administration: “How the start of Trump’s second term looks like some autocracies.”
Anchor Geoff Bennett: President Trump’s social media post over the weekend, “He who saves his country does not violate any law,” implying that he is above the law, triggered alarm bells from experts who were already concerned about the legal and constitutional boundaries tested in President Trump’s first few weeks in office.
The “experts” for liberal media are liberals that are never described as liberals.
PBS’s guest fear-spreader on Monday evening was professor Kim Lane Scheppele of Princeton University, who “studies the rise and fall of democratic governments….” Don’t say professor Scheppele isn’t adaptable — she also appeared on the News Hour in 2023 (alongside nutty professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss) to warn of threats to democracy, but from the House GOP.
Co-anchor Amna Nawaz: So, many of President Trump’s actions we have seen so far that are already being challenged on the basis of their legality or constitutionality, these are things he promised to do, said he would do as president. He would say now this is what voters want him to do and so he’s doing it as fast as he can through executive orders. How do you see it?
Kim Lane Scheppele: ….A lot of these are things he promised, but democracy isn’t just about getting elected and meeting promises. You have to fulfill the promises, if you’re going to do them, in the proper legal way….
The anchor upped the ante.
Nawaz: This is also a president who has praised strongmen in other countries, authoritarian leaders in other nations, people like Vladimir Putin in Russia, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary. As someone who has lived in both Russia and Hungary, are you seeing patterns here that mirror what you saw there?
Scheppele: Yeah, absolutely. So the thing about these strongmen leaders is that what makes them strong is that they have managed to escape legal constraints on their power. So they have neutralized their parliaments so that they don’t talk back to them. They have captured their courts so that they don’t override them. They have altered the election law so that no one can get rid of them….
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