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The Guardian reports chilling -if not altogether surprising- news that David Smith (the chairman of the now-infamous Sinclair Broadcast Group) assured candidate Donald Trump in 2016 that his organization had his back. Because, you know, that’s the role of a news agency.

“The chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group met Donald Trump at the White House during a visit to pitch a potentially lucrative new product to administration officials, the Guardian has learned.

“David D Smith, whose company has been criticised for making its anchors read a script echoing Trump’s attacks on the media, said he briefed officials last year on a system that would enable authorities to broadcast direct to any American’s phone.

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“‘I just wanted them to be aware of the technology,” Smith said in an interview. He also recalled an earlier meeting with Trump during the 2016 election campaign, where he told the future president: “We are here to deliver your message.'”

This from the chairman of a broadcast group that’s poised to reach into over 70% of unsuspecting American households.

Sinclair isn’t spreading the news; Sinclair is spreading propaganda. Pure and simple. Well, maybe not exactly “pure,” and okay, not so much “simple” as “Machiavellian,” but you get the point. Sinclair Broadcast Group makes FoxNews look quaint. What’s worse, their viewers aren’t even aware that their news is being replaced by “facts” that are being broadcast only to prop up a mewling, orange, tin-plated wannabe dictator.

Novelist Bruce Coville once offered that “Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.” George Orwell wrote “It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control,’ they called it; in Newspeak, ‘doublethink.'” William Shakespeare earlier claimed “What’s past is prologue.”

In Trumpland, where we’re divisiveness is encouraged and hate is preached, we can only hope that Kurt Vonnegut was right when he wrote “Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'”