White House photo.

In the scandal-a-day Trump administration, it’s easy to overlook major stories. Much of the recent news coverage has been taken up by the Barr summary, which declares there’s nothing to see, the president is innocent and by the way, the American people can’t see any of the actual Mueller report.

But what’s being ignored is the fact President Donald Trump has launched a multi-pronged attack on free speech and the media.

Trump has a long-running feud with the media. He’s branded them fake news, a term neither he or his followers understand. To Trump, fake news is any news he doesn’t like, even if it’s 100 percent true.

But apart from smearing the media, Trump and his followers have actually taken steps to muzzle news outlets and restrict free speech. Many of these steps came after the story about the Covington Catholic High School students who clashed with Native American elder Nathan Phillips during a pro-life demonstration. The students were incited by the Black Israelites and Phillips got between them because he saw the situation could get violent. The media got some parts of the story wrong and this has been weaponized against them.

CNN and The Washington Post are now facing $250 million libel suits filed by the parents of Nicholas Sandmann, one of the Covington students featured in the video. Trump groupie Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) also sued Twitter for $250M. He claimed they deliberately banned right-wing users and was mad they allowed a parody account that mocked him. Unfortunately, Nunes’ widely-ridiculed lawsuit backfired. The Devin Nunes’ Cow parody account now has more users than Nunes!

This legal action is not an accident. The suits are being financed by an unknown wealthy benefactor. This sounds like a strategy used by Peter Thiel, a billionaire venture capitalist, who used this tactic to destroy Gawker. Thiel was peeved at Gawker because they outed him. So when Gawker published a sex tape of wrestler Hulk Hogan, Thiel funded Hogan’s lawsuit against them. Hogan was awarded a $31M settlement, which forced Gawker to shut down, granting Thiel his wish.

It seems the lawsuits against the media outlets have the same goal — to silence them or permanently shut them down.

But it’s not just lawsuits. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently said he wanted to change the libel laws to make it easier for people to sue. In a court brief, Thomas suggested returning libel laws to 13th century standards. His proposed change would allow public figures to sue media outlets and satirists.

“The common law deemed libels against public figures to be, if anything, more serious and injurious than ordinary libels,” wrote Thomas.

Trump wants a situation where media outlets are scared to tell the truth in fear of getting drowned by punitive lawsuits. As a wannabe despot, the last thing Trump wants is truth tellers publishing facts. He’d rather have them too scared to print hard-hitting stories.

And according to Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” one of the first things Trump wanted to do after he entered the White House was to change the libel laws to make it easier to go after journalists and authors. In 2016, Trump said, “I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”

As I mentioned in a previous article, Roy Cohn, Trump’s political mentor, taught him how to use lawsuits as a weapon. Trump wants a situation where media outlets are scared to tell the truth in fear of getting drowned by punitive lawsuits. As a wannabe despot, the last thing Trump wants is truth tellers publishing facts. He’d rather have them too scared to print hard-hitting stories.

And it’s not too hard to figure out where Trump is getting these ideas. Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin recently signed a bill that would make it illegal to publish “fake news” or stories that “disrespect” the government.

“Online news outlets and users that spread ‘fake news’ will face fines of up to 1.5 million rubles ($22,900) for repeat offenses. Insulting state symbols and the authorities, including Putin, will carry a fine of up to 300,000 rubles and 15 days in jail for repeat offenses,” according to the Moscow Times.

Trump has the same goal as his boss, Putin. He wants to silence the media, unless they’re writing glowing stories about him. As FOX News Channel news model Ainsley Earhardt said, “He’s saying if you don’t want to be called the enemy, then get the story right, be accurate and report the story the way I want it reported.”

And this plan is happening right before our eyes.