An Enemy of the People

Notes from a journalist during the Trump years. Entry #1.

I am an enemy of the people — at least, according to the most powerful man in the world. It’s a strange time to be a journalist. The industry is falling to pieces, the president is a narcissistic maniac and we’re regularly the target of his attacks. Presidents have been attacking the press since the early days of America, but this is different.

Multiple domestic terrorists have made kill lists filled with names of journalists and media figures. Assassinations have been attempted. They didn’t go after just any journalists, though—it’s only been the ones Trump doesn’t like. It’s been the kind of journalists he points at during his manic rallies and calls the “enemy of the people.” Someday, I fear, one of us will be killed. Maybe more than one.

I have been repeatedly threatened since Trump took office. I have received many death threats from Trump supporters on Twitter, and they usually note that I’m a journalist they despise when they make these threats. They are hollow threats, but they do impact your psyche. I also received what appeared to be a threat in the mail at one point. For the record, I’m armed.

I have decided to start a series where I document what life was like during the Trump years from a journalist’s perspective. I feel because of the ire we receive from this president that a journalist’s perspective is a valuable one. The United States has never had a president like Trump, and the press has never had to cover a president like Trump. We’ve also never been targeted quite like this.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” ―George Orwell

Today is a rather slow day in these turbulent times. The president is arguing that his wife does not have a body double and he’s grounding malfunctioning Boeing planes. A more eventful day might include his aides being indicted or the latest constitutional crisis. Maybe he’ll say something outrageously racist or sexist to spice things up.

Journalists, and others, often joke that we’re afraid to open Twitter in the morning. You never know what awful thing Trump has done this time. But it seems most of the country has become numb to the daily assault on our faculties that comes with Donald Trump being president.

We have grown accustomed to the cruelness, the absurdities, the criminality and the always present reality that things aren’t going to get better any time soon. Even if Trump is removed from office in the near future, the scars he‘ll leave on American democracy and the electorate will take years, perhaps generations, to heal.

Donald Trump is a historic president—but in the worst ways possible. Our institutions have been maimed, and it seems many of the political norms that existed for decades before he took office have been all but destroyed because of his actions and the sheer fact he made it to the Oval Office in the first place. Things aren’t ever going back to normal.

I’ll be here taking notes, because that’s something I’m good at. Like letters from a warzone, I’ll do my best to capture the scene around me and the significance of it. Stick around.