17 ms·
No contest: Trump harasses journalists at every rally – by now, hundreds or thousands of them. And whistle blowers? He fired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman and h
by nicwolff 6y ago
No contest: Trump harasses journalists at every rally – by now, hundreds or thousands of them. And whistle blowers? He fired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman and his brother after Vindman testified. His lackeys in the House exposed the IRS whistleblower by name.
- ch4s3 6y agoI don't really have a stake here, and voted for Obama but he and his justice department prosecuted a record number of journalists. To quote the Washington Post "Of the 13 people who have" (ever) "been prosecuted under the Espionage Act for leaking secrets, eight were arrested under Obama's administration"
- slg 6y agoAnyone have a full list of who they are counting as either the 8 or 13 in that quote? According to Wikipedia, the number of people who have been charged under the espionage act is much higher than 13. For example, there are 52 pages of people convicted under the act.[1] I guess it depends on your definition of "leaking". The relevant dictionary definition of leak is "to give out (information) surreptitiously".[2] Giving information to a foreign government should seemingly be classified as leaking so I'm not sure we should necessarily link it to either journalistic endeavors or whistleblowing. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Persons_convicted_under_the_Espionage_Act_of_1917 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Persons_convicted_und... [2] - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leak https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leak
- ch4s3 6y ago*For leaking secrets to journalists
- slg 6y agoOk, don't you think that is a pretty big qualifier to leave out? It also leads us to a question of what is a journalist? Reasonable people can look at Assange and see him as either a journalist or an agent of a foreign government.
- ch4s3 6y agoIt’s in the quote, except for “to journalists” which is in the article I pulled the quote from. I suppose I could have included the next two sentences.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoYou're being intentionally misleading. The eight prosecuted are not journalists themselves but government employees who leaked sensitive documents to journalists. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/5/obama-and-leakerswhoaretheeightchargedunderespionageact.html http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/5/obama-and-le...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Finnucane 6y agoIt’s true that Obama was pretty agressive about prosecuting whistleblowers, but it also true that no president in modern times before the Donald has called the press ‘the enemy of the people’ and calls every criticism of him ‘fake news’.
- liability 6y agoFree speech is a two-way street. Journalists are allowed to criticize politicians, but for the same reason politicians are allowed to criticize journalists. The government prosecuting journalists concerns me more than the government criticizing journalists, though both are concerning. Thankfully Trump is too impotent to make good on most of his juvenile threats, or we'd definitely be in trouble. More than Trump, I fear a hypothetical future president who's competent enough to do more than spout hot air.
- colejohnson66 6y agoI agree he’s mostly empty threats. After all, he’s threatened to revoke social media platforms’ Section 230 protection since before he took office. But when Twitter had the audacity to fact check him, he attempted to make good on his word with an executive order. He thinks he can do a lot more than he can, but we still should be fighting back.
- Finnucane 6y agoAnd in addition, Vindman wasn’t prosecuted for leaking secrets. He was fired in retribution for giving testimony before Congress, a completely legal thing to do.