President Trump is waging a war against the free press, according to presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, and on the other hand, former Attorney General Eric Holder was its champion.

Yes, Klobuchar seriously suggested during Thursday's Democratic primary debate that Holder did more to preserve the rights of the press than Trump — a ridiculous statement to anyone who remembers U.S. politics before 2016.

Trump is certainly no friend to the media, but the comparison is ridiculous, considering Holder was the head of a Justice Department that secretly obtained phone records for reporters and editors that worked at the Associated Press news agency.

There is an argument to be made that Trump has done a disservice to the press in both rhetoric and action. He has regularly decried the media as the “enemy of the people” and did away with the daily White House press briefings. But to claim he is worse than Holder, who seized private, home phone information from more than 20 individual reporters, is absurd.

When confronted about this violation, Holder insisted the DOJ had done nothing wrong. Spying on journalists was necessary, he said, considering there was a prominent national security leak that needed investigating. But Holder never offered specifics and instead left this as an open-ended, unconvincing excuse.

Trump is disparaging journalists, but Holder did much worse. Even the Left admitted as much when the news about Holder’s subpoena broke. To suggest otherwise now is negligent at best and dishonest at worst, and Klobuchar should know better.