“Trump is deploying a strategy, used by autocrats, designed to completely disorient public perception,” John Podesta writes. | AP Photo Podesta: Trump trying to 'undermine reality'

John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, accused President Donald Trump on Thursday of employing a deliberate strategy to confuse the public and mislead them so that they no longer trust news organizations or other independent arbiters of the truth.

Podesta, writing in The Washington Post, echoed concerns aired recently by some media critics in arguing that the president’s aggressive stance toward the press, especially his use of the term “fake news” to dismiss data and news coverage he dislikes, is “dangerous.” But he went farther than some critics in assigning intentionality to Trump.


“Trump is deploying a strategy, used by autocrats, designed to completely disorient public perception,” Podesta wrote. “He’s not just trying to spin the bad news of the day; all politicians do that. He seeks nothing less than to undermine the public’s belief that any news can be trusted, that any news is true, that there is any fixed reality.”

Podesta compared Trump’s aggressive stance toward the media to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the autocratic strongman whose government U.S. intelligence officials believe ordered the hack into Podesta’s email account during the campaign.

“He is emulating the successful strategy of Vladimir Putin,” Podesta wrote, cautioning that Trump’s behavior puts the U.S. “in danger of experiencing an information void like Russia,” where people are so cynical that they “hear something on TV and assume it’s a lie.”

In the op-ed, Podesta urged Americans to “maintain a heightened vigilance” and be wary of things they read on social media, but also “be wary of any effort, particularly from the White House, to disorient or discredit reliable information.”

Journalists, in turn, must continue to fact-check the White House, he wrote.