Donald Trump and his team took new steps to destroy the wind energy industry this week, pausing construction of five offshore wind projects capable of powering nearly 2.7 million homes, in a step even some of the president’s allies saw as radical.
Pressed for some kind of explanation, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the move was “due to national security risks.”
A week earlier, facing a lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation over the president’s ballroom vanity project, the White House said construction had to continue — for “national security” reasons.
On Sunday, Trump renewed his effort to annex Greenland and add it to the United States, and a day later, the president told reporters, “We need Greenland for national security.”
With increasing frequency, the White House sees “national security” as the answer to every question. (I’m tempted to describe it as officials’ “trump card,” though that might be a little too on the nose.) The political implications are unsubtle: No prominent voices in the American political mainstream would deliberately choose to undermine the nation’s national security needs. So when the president and his administration insist that one of their goals is necessary for national security reasons, it’s intended to shut down debate.
Or at least, that’s the idea. Part of the problem in these cases is that there’s little reason to accept such claims at face value.
The other part of the problem is that the list keeps metastasizing. Shortly after midnight, Trump posted this message to his social media platform:
The Failing New York Times, and their lies and purposeful misrepresentations, is a serious threat to the National Security of our Nation. Their Radical Left, Unhinged Behavior, writing FAKE Articles and Opinions in a never ending way, must be dealt with and stopped. THEY ARE A TRUE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! Thank you for you [sic] attention to this matter.
Trump’s whining about the newspaper is hardly new — two weeks ago, the president argued that the Times’ reporting on his age and stamina was “seditious, perhaps even treasonous” — but it’s not at all common for him to describe an independent media outlet as “a serious threat” to the country’s national security.
And yet it’s not at all common for any head of state, in any democracy, to target a journalistic institution with such authoritarian vitriol. What’s less clear is what, exactly, Trump intends to do about his hysterical claims. If the president is just popping off, peddling routine nonsense and engaging in chest-thumping, then nothing will come of this. But if he genuinely believes that the nation’s paper of record is a “a serious threat” to the United States’ “national security,” engaged in “seditious, perhaps even treasonous” behavior and pushing news that “must be dealt with and stopped,” then Americans are poised to see a fight over the First Amendment unseen in this country since the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 18th century.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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