So what if Donald Trump strong-armed media advertisers in the same way he’s trying to get companies to keep jobs in the United States?

The subject was broached by a faraway observer after Trump’s angry and rambling anti-press rhetorical screed yesterday. (Poynter) Or after what the alternate universe of Sean Hannity last evening called a “must-see epic beatdown” on “the abusively biased left-wing press.”

The more knowing observer lives amid the rise of an authoritarian right.

He’s Miklos Martin-Kovacs, a droll and eclectic former Hungarian diplomat who was posted to the United States and is now back in Budapest plying his original trade, journalism, as a local TV and radio journalist-commentator. And, if you can believe this, he’s also running the Chicago Yoga Studio in Budapest (he was economic attaché in Chicago for a time).

I sent him a link to Trump’s press conference, in part because Hungary has been heading down an authoritarian path for several years under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Meanwhile, ultra-right parties are cropping up all over Europe.

He reiterated how blaming and bashing the media can be politically beneficial for Trump. OK, fine, we knew that. But he then noted how “most of the news organization’s’ existence largely depends on the market and non-stop attacks on their credibility could lead to significant financial losses. That’s especially true if big-ticket advertisers, perhaps seeking to make nice with Trump or just being gutless, “have second thoughts about spending at White House-targeted outlets.”

That’s a contrarian notion, is it not, especially as some media outlets crow to the rafters about their dramatically increased viewership and digital subscriptions as a result of serving as tough-minded Trump critics. Keep bashing us, they imply, we’ll laugh all the way to the bank.

But if Trump will scare Ford Motor Co. about plants in Mexico, why not scare them and others about advertising on certain broadcast or cable outlets he doesn’t like?

Richard Nixon went as far as threatening to “screw around” with the broadcast TV licenses of the Washington Post Company as it was investigating Watergate (he also routinely wrote nasty comments about individual reporters on the daily news summary he got each morning).

Overseas this pulling of ads is happening “in more than one European country. Many upcoming European nationalist populist...politicians probably feel encouraged by Mr. Trump’s anti-media agenda. Politicians who share his views, once in power, already have been making every effort to change the ownership structures of privately owned press and news media ventures…”

He concedes the change in corporate structures would be hard to do in the U.S. But the Trump camp’s visceral disdain of much the press (even as Trump so craves its approval) leaves one wondering what he thinks (if he has a clue about the world outside America) of those countries where the press is muzzled and other democratic institutions are confronted by new laws making it tough to fulfill their original missions.

From Budapest, he wrote, “The U.S. is still lucky because the Constitution was wisely and carefully composed. But in fact fierce attacks on the press currently protected by the Constitution make one wonder when someone from the executive branch might come up with the idea of changing the basic law.”

Sound crazy? Any weirder than Trump himself yesterday?

The morning babble

On this morning, of all mornings, you had to start with Fox & Friends because, as Trump put it yesterday, “They’re very honorable people.”

Their honesty, morality, ethics, principle and right-mindedness were manifested in coverage of what they joyfully called the “Beat the Press” event. There were lots of clips of Trump, and Rush Limbaugh now heralding Trump. “He’s back, this was his wheelhouse,” said co-host__Ainsley Earhardt__.