Story highlights Frida Ghitis: Trump's media attacks are taken from the populist authoritarian playbook

Discrediting critics, fostering division, targeting the media -- all undercut democracy

Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review, and a former CNN producer and correspondent. The views expressed in this commentary are her own.

(CNN) Americans, along with the rest of the world, are trying to figure out what's behind President Donald Trump's grotesque barrage of attacks on the media, ironically revved up just in time for the Fourth of July.

Frida Ghitis

But whether by design or by impulse, Trump is in practice following the authoritarian playbook. He displays the instincts of a populist autocrat. He didn't need to read books about Mussolini, study Hugo Chavez's maneuvers, or become schooled in the tactics of Vladimir Putin. He has shown these things are in his blood.

Indeed, he appears not to want to govern so much as rule.

We discern this in his lack understanding or respect for the foundational and sacrosanct principles of the United States -- among them a free press and the right to criticize the president -- but also from his apparent desire to accumulate power by manipulating public opinion, dividing the country, eroding freedoms, and weakening institutions that are not in his control.

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